Join us for a discussion and audio experience with Nottingham rapper Cappo and collaborating sound artist Tom Harris, exploring the ideas and processes behind CAPStone, Cappo’s week-long exhibition at Bonington Gallery between 14 – 21 June.
For the third event in our Bonington Connects programme, we are delighted to invite Nottingham based rapper Cappo and sound artist Tom Harris to discuss their collaboration and explore the ideas behind Cappo’s solo exhibition CAPStone. The two artists will also lead an improvised sound workshop and experience – utilising spoken word and elements found within the exhibition.
Bonington Connects
Bonington Connects is a student-programmed talks, discussion and workshop series inviting people to engage in thought-provoking conversations in response to Bonington Gallery’s exhibition programme. Aimed at creating an accessible atmosphere, this series encourages exploration of our exhibitions in informal, open and engaging settings. This installment has been programmed and organised by final-year MFA Fine Art student Vidhi Jangra.
We are pleased to acknowledge that funds from NTU TILT have supported this event.
Building upon his captivating performance during last year’s launch of After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024 (curated by Johny Pitts), we are delighted to welcome back Cappo to present a free weeklong exhibition entitled CAPStone.
This installation will be a physical translation of the concepts and themes found in the critically acclaimed music of this hugely important and influential Nottingham rap artist.
Exploring new possibilities for the alignment of hip hop lyricism with more traditional artistic mediums, CAPStone attempts to reevaluate how music is perceived, contemplated, and represented in contemporary settings by deconstructing the sounds, thoughts, and feelings contained within it.
Developed and curated with the help of sound artist Tom Harris, and based upon two thirds of the CAPStone LP trilogy (submitted as part of Cappo’s recent doctorate in English, Creative Writing, and rap music), themes of isolation and sociality (in abstracted forms) serve as backdrops for the piece, manifesting as two core experiences:
S.T.A.R.V.E. invites participants to experience isolation amongst the multitudes as part of an age-old narrative inherited by myriad artists, musicians, poets and authors to highlight the potential of loneliness as catalyst for mental health decline.
Houses speaks to an understanding of human existence as being profoundly social. Here, through visual, performative, and communicative means, the innate drive within us to remain part of a collective is uniquely interrogated.
The contrast between solitude and sociality — or separation and inclusion — has long been a subject of artistic investigation. Carrying this tradition forward using modern methods of expression, CAPStone intertextually engages with multiple artistic movements and eras to help revise these fundamental elements of the human condition.
Dr Paul Adey is lecturer of Popular Music and Music Business at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Art and Design. Performing under the artist name of Cappo, he has practiced hip hop lyricism for over two decades. During this time, he has had the privilege of appearing at many of Europe’s premier live music venues, performing alongside artists such as Public Enemy, Skepta, and The Sleaford Mods.
Paul’s interdisciplinary research focuses on popular culture, literary devices and musical concepts such as intertextuality, allusion, and the semiotic analysis of song lyrics. The nature of Cappo’s praxis links his work to rap music, English literature, Creative Writing, and media studies.
Instagram: @kafka_poe_murakami
X: @CAPPO_GENGHIS
Linktr.ee: @_Cappo_
Tom Harris is a sound artist based at Primary in Nottingham, working at the intersection of sound engineering, electronic improvisation, musicianship, and contemporary art. His multifaceted practice wholeheartedly embraces fusion—bridging disciplines such as installation, live performance, essay writing, and collaborative movement work.
Tom’s approach to sound is both technical and intuitive, thriving in interdisciplinary spaces, where sonic experimentation meets visual and physical storytelling.
Recent projects include:
Sonic Service Series – deep electronic improvisations (2025 – ongoing)
Lost in the Hills festival – sound installation/performance with Juliana Day (2025)
Samia Halaby: Performing Abstraction at Nottingham Contemporary with Guohan Zeng and Owen Campbell (2025)
Sonic Sculpture exhibition series with Near Now and Primary (2024)
Emerald Island – Arts Council DYCP award (2024)
NTU Graduate Fashion Show – live score (2023)
Our Acres by Solomon Berrio-Allen – performance live score (2023)
Mixed Feelings – featured by the British Music Collection (2023)
Links:
Tom Harris: Artistic direction/sonic sculpture
Dan Gardner (aka Theorist): Video Design
Danny Boyes: Installation artist
Mr Brown (Bee Graphics): Graphic design
Congi, Theorist, Sam Zircon, King Kashmere, and Dr Zygote: Musical accompaniment
Join Weird Hope Engines‘ co-curator, Jamie Sutcliffe, for a free guided tour of Bonington Gallery’s latest exhibition.
In this guided tour, writer and Weird Hope Engines co-curator Jamie Sutcliffe will discuss the themes of the exhibition while exploring tabletop roleplaying games as potent tools for imagining radically different possibilities. From the transformation of the self to the evolution of social organization, this tour will introduce the artists behind each work in the show and explain how their various approaches to game design might position play as a unique form of speculation.
This event will last up to an hour. Please meet inside Bonington Building in the foyer space outside the Gallery doors at 12.55 pm. Free and open to all, booking required.
Image: Jamie Sutcliffe by Robin Christian
Jamie is a writer, curator, and co-director of Strange Attractor Press. His work explores artistic encounters with science fictive fabulation, the politics of gaming, animation and its multiple entanglements with developments in the life sciences, haunted media, and the persistence of myth, all understood as technologies of selfhood.
His essays, interviews and reviews have been published internationally by Art Monthly, Art Review, e-flux Criticism, Frieze, Rhizome and The White Review. He is the editor of Documents Of Contemporary Art: Magic, published by The Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, and co-editor of Weeb Theory, a collection of theoretical resources for artists encountering the intermedial fan cultures of animatio
Join us for a free guided tour of Bonington Gallery’s latest exhibition with BSL interpretation.
Book your free place and enjoy a tour of Bonington Gallery’s third exhibition of the season, Weird Hope Engines curated by David Blandy, Rebecca Edwards and Jamie Sutcliffe, led by the Gallery’s Director Tom Godfrey.
Along with an introduction to the exhibition, Tom will talk through the accompanying Vitrines exhibition Nottingham Subcultural Fashion in the 1980s.
This event will last up to an hour. Please meet inside Bonington Building in the foyer space outside the Gallery doors at 12.55 pm. Free and open to all, booking required.
Book your free ticket and join us at Bonington Gallery for the Critical Hits Zine Fair.
Marking the launch of our next exhibition Weird Hope Engines (22 March – 10 May) this event celebrates DIY publishing and tabletop gaming with vendors from Nottingham and around the UK including Melsonian Arts Council, Copy/Paste Co-op, Warp Miniatures, Ramshackle Games and others. Critical Hits Zine Fair brings together independent publishers, artists, and writers exploring themes of critical worlding, resistance, and alternative futures.
Alongside a diverse range of zines and collectables to purchase, the Fair also features a programme of talks and conversations with artists from the exhibition including Zedeck Siew and Angela Washko, and panel discussions on fantasy illustration, game design and miniature fabrication with Andrew Walter, Amanda Lee Franck, Scrap World, and Alex Huntley.
Critical Hits Zine Fair also features gaming sessions with David Blandy, Angela Washko and Andrew Walter, as well as a film screening programme delving further into the narratives, aesthetics, and communities that shape these immersive worlds, including the documentaries World of Darkness (2017) and Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons (2019).
Talks:
12:00 – 12:45
Drawing Down The Moon: The Art of TTRPG Illustration
Amanda Lee Franck and Scrap Princess
Chaired by Andrew Walter
13:00 – 13:45
Warped Worlds and Ramshackle Realms: Worlds In Miniature
Curtis Fell (Ramshackle Games) and Alex Huntley (Warp Miniatures)
Chaired by Chris MacDowell
14:00 – 14:45
Art Can Never Be Games!: What Is An Art Game?
Tom Kemp and Angela Washko
Chaired by Jamie Sutcliffe and Rebecca Edwards
15:00 – 15:45
Games Design For Planetary Survival
Chris Bissette, Laurie O’Connell and Zedeck Siew
Chaired by David Blandy
Game play sessions:
11.30am: David Blandy, Eco Mofos
2pm: Andrew Walter, Swyvers
3.30pm: Angela Washko, The Council is in Session
Join us for a free guided tour of Bonington Gallery’s latest exhibition with BSL interpretation.
Book your free place and enjoy a tour of Bonington Gallery’s second exhibition of the season, Knees Kiss Ground by Motunrayo Akinola, led by the Gallery’s Director Tom Godfrey.
Along with an introduction to the exhibition Tom will talk through the accompanying Vitrines exhibition by The Aimless Archive.
This event will last up to an hour. Please meet inside Bonington Building in the foyer space outside the Gallery doors at 12.55 pm. Free and open to all, booking required.
On the occasion of the Design & Digital Arts (D&DA) building launch in November 2024, Bonington Gallery partnered with Nottingham School of Art & Design to develop and present two specially commissioned art installations by design practice Foxall Studio and artist Matt Woodham – both working at the forefront of their respective fields and industries, and both past exhibitors at Bonington Gallery.
Whilst distinct in approach, each commission considered the technological potential within the D&DA building; the generosity it awards to different forms of creative practice; and the dynamic collaborative ethos that drives the student and staff community. This community was central to the realisation of both commissions, actively involved in the production of digital material that was visible across the building and in learning from professional practitioners, recognising the endless possibilities of collaboration and engaging with new equipment & methodologies.
Taking the approach of a ‘hack-day’, Foxall Studio ran three consecutive 1-day workshops in October 2025 with 40+ undergraduate students from 9 courses in the department. Working in small groups and supported by a technical team, students channelled their individual and collective practices through a variety of technologies to rapidly produce a diverse range of digital artwork and creative content. Foxall Studio then operated as magazine editors, utilising and framing this content to produce an expansive ‘digital zine’ that will be seen displayed on screens throughout the building.
Also inspired by the dynamic encounters between people and the spaces in D&DA, and working directly with staff and students from our new MSc in Creative Technologies, Matthew Woodham’s project in room 103 creates a simulated world of interacting organisms with unexpected possibilities. Woodham has created an interactive and immersive real-time installation to generate ‘novel dynamics’, by allowing visitors to alter parameters of a reaction-diffusion system in a specially created computer programme. The audience collaboratively constructs the projections in the space, adapting the experience for the viewer. Through doing this, visitors can consider the relationship between individuals, wider communities and the space they inhabit.
Two public tours of the commissions were be led by Bonington Gallery Director Tom Godfrey on November 12th & 14th.
Join us for a free guided tour of Bonington Gallery’s latest exhibition with BSL interpretation.
Book your free place and enjoy a tour of Bonington Gallery’s first exhibition of the new season, After The End Of History: British Working Class Photography 1989 – 2024, led by the Gallery’s Director Tom Godfrey.
Along with an introduction to the exhibition, Tom will give an overview of the Gallery’s programme this season.
This event will last up to an hour. Please meet inside Bonington Building in the foyer space outside the Gallery doors at 12.55 pm. Free and open to all, booking required.
After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989 – 2024 is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition curated by Johny Pitts with Hayward Gallery Touring.
Bonington Gallery is pleased to present Knees Kiss Ground by London based artist Motunrayo Akinola (b.1992).
Motunrayo explores themes related to faith, migration, belonging, colonialism and postcolonialism using everyday materials, domestic imagery, historical imagery and text. His work manifests predominantly through sculpture, installation, performance, sound and drawing.
As a British-born Nigerian who is comfortable in both spaces, Akinola’s work investigates systems and subtle cultural codings that maintain a sense of othering. He creates environments that question societal positions on contemporary issues by re-contextualising familiar objects and materials – interrupting quick associations and creating points of access into othered perspectives.
Motunrayo’s interest in attitudes towards migration stems from his dual upbringing in London and Lagos, Nigeria. Work created during recent years explores postcolonial power dynamics and the psychology of ownership. By noting subtle gaps in cultural knowledge, his work encourages a new understanding about the possession of space.
Having studied both architecture and art, Motunrayo is interested in the impacts the built environment has on human experience. For this exhibition, Motunrayo will present works including a full-scale replica of a shipping container made from cardboard, a site-specific drawing that documents a private performance in Bonington Gallery, and several works that use light to explore the relationship between light and religious or spiritual rituals, such as the Biblical association of light as a revelatory presence.
This exhibition has been produced in partnership with South London Gallery where Motunrayo spent six months on the Postgraduate Residency programme in 2023/24, culminating in the solo exhibition Knees Kiss Ground. This iteration of the exhibition is an expansion on the works created during that period.
Motunrayo Akinola is a London-based artist who uses images of the home and everyday materials to explore comfort and belonging. He creates sculptures, installations, sound and drawings. He studied at RA Schools, graduating in 2023. As a British-born Nigerian who has spent time in and now feels comfortable in both countries, Akinola’s work exposes the nuanced differences between the two places.
Bonington Gallery have partnered with South London Gallery to deliver their 13th Postgraduate Residency, an open submission six-month residency that provides an early-career artist with a rare opportunity to produce a new body of work, which is then exhibited at the SLG and in this instance at Bonington Gallery. The residency is open to artists who have completed a BA, and have undertaken a period of self-directed, peer-led or postgraduate study in the year prior to the residency. This can include alternative, peer organised and non-accredited programmes from an institution, collective or art school in the UK as well as an MA, MFA, PGDip, MRes.
The SLG has an international reputation for its contemporary art exhibitions by established, mid-career and younger artists and programme of film and performance events. Its highly regarded, free education programme includes a peer-led young people’s forum; family workshops; artist-led projects and commissions on local housing estates; and a programme for looked after children.
The Postgraduate Residency is supported by The Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment.
Press
Floorr Magazine
Corridor8 review by Jade Foster
The Blue Description Project (2023) is a new experimental version of Derek Jarman’s seminal film, Blue (1993). It features expanded accessibility measures including audio description, creative captions and in-person British Sign Language interpretation.
“Moving beyond words.” – Time Out “Extraordinary“ ★★★★★ – The Times
In 1993, Derek Jarman released Blue, an epoch-defining account of AIDS, illness, and the experience of disability in a culture of repressive heteronormativity and compulsory able-bodiedness. Though often referred to as a feature film, Blue never existed exclusively in one medium. It was screened in theatres, simulcast on television and radio, released as a CD, and published as a book, creating opportunities for many different kinds of sensory abilities—visual, aural, and textual—to experience the work.
Conceived by artists and writers Christopher Robert Jones, Liza Sylvestre, and Sarah Hayden, The Blue Description Project creates a new, experimental iteration of Blue on the 30th anniversary of its release and Jarman’s death. Reflecting Blue’s standing as a foundational work of Crip* art, the project challenges ableist hierarchies in art while focusing on the generative possibilities of difference and interdependence.
In 1994, Jarman wrote in Chroma: “If I have overlooked something you hold precious — write it in the margin.” Taking up this invitation to write in the margin, The Blue Description Project builds on the multifaceted nature of Jarman’s work through newly commissioned and expansive accessibility.
*Crip—Cripistemology and the Arts.
The event is open to everyone and is intended as an immersive and collective experience for those who may benefit from accessibility provision or not.
The film screening will have creative captions and audio description that is edited into the main soundtrack of the film. It will also be British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted. The discussion afterwards will be live-captioned and BSL-interpreted.
During the screening, the space will be dim, with only the BSL interpreters illuminated via spotlights. The film soundtrack will play into the space at ‘cinema level’ volume.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible via a lift. Visit our website for general access information for our building.
Visit our YouTube channel to watch a video tour of the journey into our gallery from the street.
Invigilators and staff will be on hand throughout the evening to offer any assistance needed.
Accessible toilets are very close by to the gallery.
If you would like to discuss any further access requirements, or identify a way that we can make your attendance easier then please email us.
The Blue Description Project (BDP) is produced by Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones (Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts) in partnership with Sarah Hayden (Voices in the Gallery). BDP is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with support from the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and additional support from the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities HEIF Research Stimulus Fund.
Liza Sylvestre is a transdisciplinary artist and research assistant professor within the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she has co-founded the initiative Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts. Her work has been shown internationally at venues such as the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), John Hansard Gallery (Southampton), ARGOS (Brussels), and Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt). Sylvestre has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, most recently a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship. She has been artist-in-residence at the Weisman Art Museum and the Center for Applied and Translational Sensory Science and in 2019, she received a Citizens Advocate Award from the Minnesota Commission of the Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing. Sylvestre’s work has been written about in numerous publications and books including Art in America, Mousse Magazine, Ocula Magazine, Art Monthly, and SciArt Magazine.
Christopher Robert Jones is an artist and writer based in Illinois. Their research revolves around the “failure” or “malfunctioning” of the body and how those experiences are situated at points of intersection between Queer and Crip discourses. They are a regular contributor to Art Papers magazine and their work has recently been exhibited at the Krannert Art Museum, Gallery 400, and the Weisman Art Museum. Jones is the co-founder of Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts, a transdisciplinary initiative that is housed within the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where they are also a research assistant professor.
Sarah Hayden is a writer and Associate Professor in Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Southampton. From 2019–2023, she led “Voices in the Gallery,” a research, writing and curatorial project on intersections of voice, text and access in contemporary art, funded by the AHRC. In 2022, she developed slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs in partnership with LUX. Recent writings include as if […] wearing anklesocks (for Sarah Browne’s Buttercup) and essays on Charlie Prodger for Secession Vienna and captioning as “unvoiceover” for Angelaki.
Elaine Lillian Joseph is an audio describer based in London and Birmingham. She has a BA in Modern Languages (German) and English Literature and trained as a describer at ITV under Jonathan Penny. She is a founding member of SoundScribe, a global majority collective of audio describers and consultants and a member of Collective Text, an organisation supporting accessibility in art and film through creative captioning, audio description and interpretation. The question that galvanises her practice is how can we honour the labour of access work and create a service that powerfully resonates with users? Collaboration and anti-discrimination activism is key to her work.
A selection of recently completed projects include Eve Stainton’s Impact Driver at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, an online screening of Hofesh Shechter’s Political Mother and a newly commissioned audio described track for Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs.
The producers of the project wish to thanks everyone who so generously contributed their descriptions to the Blue Description Project. Warm thanks to Elaine Lillian Joseph and Corvyn Dostie. Special thanks to James MacKay, Basilisk Communications, and Zeitgeist Films.
Image credit: Christopher Robert Jones, Liza Sylvestre, Sarah Hayden, Blue Description Project, film still, 2024. Digital movie, captions. 1:20:55. Courtesy of the artists.