Views of Matlock Bath channelled visual traditions and tropes from both photography and painting.
George Miles’ sublime large-format photographs explore how the land is used, viewed, and mediated: both physically and through its representations. This much loved local valley, championed for its picturesque qualities by the tastemakers of their times including Byron and Ruskin, bore witness to the consolidation of the English Landscape tradition, the birth of the Industrial Revolution, and of mass tourism.
In this show these interconnections and the relationship they bear upon how we view the landscape were explored through a re-presentation of a selection of images from the book that this exhibition accompanied.
Beyond the Line was an international, interdisciplinary collaboration involving artist-writer Emma Cocker, artist Nikolaus Gansterer (Vienna) and choreographer Mariella Greil (Vienna).
Cocker, Gansterer and Greil inhabited the gallery as an experimental ‘method laboratory’ for staging an encounter between choreography, drawing and writing; between body, mark and text.
Through processes of reciprocal exchange, dialogue and negotiation between three different practices, Beyond the Line interrogated the interstitial processes, practices and knowledge(s) produced in the ‘deviation’ for example, from page to performance, from word to mark, from line to action, from modes of flat image making towards transformational embodied encounters.
Glimpses of the unfolding ‘method laboratory’ were made possible through a live-feed video stream that could be viewed in the Bonington foyer. The ‘laboratory’ was open to the public at scheduled times where the artists were ‘in-residence’ to share their working processes.
Beyond the Line was conceived as ‘test-bed’ for exploring collaborative methods for working between and beyond the disciplinary lines of drawing, dance and writing and is supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture (BMUKK). Ideas and working processes emerging from Beyond the Line will be developed further as part of a 3-year collaborative research project between Cocker, Gansterer and Greil entitled Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line 2014 – 2017 (funded by the Austrian Program for Arts-based Research, PEEK).
Thursday 17 April from 10.00 am – 4.00 pm.
Schedule
10 am – 12 pm: Live Exploration Session
12 pm – 1.30 pm: The lab remains open with fragments of the research process made visible
1.30 pm – 3 pm: Live Exploration Session
3 pm – 4 pm: Discussion
Please join us for a celebratory launch of two new publications:
Traci Kelly‘s ‘Seers-in-Residence’, with contributions from Emma Cocker, Simon Cross, Ben Judd and Joanne Lee (a Nottingham Trent University/Bonington Gallery publication)
‘This publication emerges from an invitation for four researchers to spend time as Seers-in-Residence with Traci Kelly’s monoprint installation ‘Feeling It For You (Perspective)’, which was part of From Where I Stand I Can See You in January 2013. The resulting book documents the creative and critical ideas explored by participants, and reflects upon the possibilities for this innovative model for research.’
Designed by Joff + Ollie
Joanne Lee‘s ‘Gumming up the Works’, Issue #3 from the Pam Flett Press independent serial
‘This third issue fantasizes about luminous constellations of dropped chewing gum on the street, confronts a horrible compulsion to seek out the hard stuff glued under desks or in the recesses of train carriages, before finding itself fixated upon various species of lumps, heaps and piles; ultimately the writing explores creative work as a sort of digestion or composting, and suggests we have quite a lot to learn from worms’
Designed by Dust
There will be drinks and nibbles in the Atrium, followed by a live vocal performance by Denise Boyd as we relocate to Bonington Lecture Theatre for introductions to the publications, and a series of short readings. Click here to join the events page on Facebook.
Between 16 December 2019 and 10 January 2020, Nick Chaffe worked within the gallery as our ‘Motif Artist in Residence’ alongside Bruce Asbestos. During this time, Nick embraced laser cutting technology to further explore his illustrative style of minimalising and fusing together everyday items to create new meaning and possibility.
Concurrent to Bruce Asbestos’ Spring/Summer 2020 collection launch, Nick will be showcasing outcomes from his residency in the form of jewellery, sculpture and prints, as well as experiments and samples from the various processes he has been exploring.
Nick is a graphic artist, illustrator and brand designer based in Manchester. He has worked with Amnesty International, The Oscars, Time Out, London Jazz Festival, Manchester International Festival, and more locally Nottingham Contemporary and 200 Degrees Coffee.
Visit Nick’s website for more information on his work.
Discover the life and work of lithographic artist Lawrence Gleadle. See some of his original posters, alongside prints of others, and learn the stories behind them; how they were lost, found and restored, and their importance and place in British cinema history. The exhibition also explores the stories behind Netherfield printing company Stafford & Co. and the printing process of the 1920s and 1930s.,
Lawrence Gleadle was a lithographic artist for Stafford & Co. in the 1920’s and 1930’s; at the time the largest printer of posters in England. After a long apprenticeship and years of experience, Lawrence became ‘The Big Head Man’, the artist who drew the portraits of cinema stars and advertising characters. It was a title given to him by other artists, of which he was very proud, as the ‘Big Head Man’ was regarded as the most skilled of the artists.
He kept samples of his work but left in WW2 and never returned to the trade. The posters were put away and forgotten for many years until given to his son Godfrey (Goff) Gleadle in the early 1980s. At that time, it was very difficult to find out about or reproduce the posters and it wasn’t until 2015 that Goff was able to identify, date them and scan them onto computer files so prints could be made.
Kendal James, a Portsmouth artist, was able to repair and restore damage on the computer files. She and Goff teamed up with the aim of getting Lawrence’s work and talent recognised. Together they have held successful exhibitions in and around Portsmouth where they live, and even had a piece on the BBC One Show.
However, Lawrence was a Nottingham man and it is very much a Nottingham story, so it has always been an ambition to bring his story and his work back to Nottingham. It is particularly fitting to have this exhibition here at Nottingham Trent University, as before Lawrence began his apprenticeship aged 16, he attended the Nottingham Municipal School Of Art. The school later became known as the Nottingham College of Art, which is now part of Nottingham Trent University.
Work by Lawrence Gleadle
Curated by Godfrey Gleadle
In collaboration with Kendal James
Emily Andersen is a London-based artist and senior lecturer in photography at Nottingham Trent University. Her work has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally for over 25 years.
We’re delighted to host London-based artist Emily Andersen’s latest solo exhibition and accompanying book launch of Portraits: Black & White published by Anomie Publishing in October 2018.
Andersen has built up a remarkable portfolio of photographic work including many high-profile artists, musicians, writers, poets, film directors, actors and architects, with Peter Blake, Derek Jarman, Zaha Hadid, Arthur Miller, Helen Mirren, Michael Nyman and Eduardo Paolozzi among those featured in this publication of black-and-white portraits.
The book features an essay by contemporary art critic Jonathan P. Watts, exploring the lives of some of Andersen’s many sitters, and discusses her practice within the wider critical debates of photography since the late 1980s.
The Portraits: Black & White book launch and Emily Andersen’s solo exhibition preview will take place on Thursday 1 November from 5 pm to 7 pm.
Email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk to reserve your free place at this event.
Emily Andersen graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1983. Her work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide including The Photographers’ Gallery, London; The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; and China Arts Museum, Shanghai. Her portraits are in the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery, London, and in other public collections including The British Library, London, and The Contemporary Art Society, London. She has won awards including the John Kobal prize for portraiture.