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Curated by Joshua Lockwood

For the second in its series of screening events, Bonington Gallery is pleased to present Time Together by Mark Aerial Waller – a feature length artist film originally commissioned by the Baltic Triennial in 2012.

Time Together, a film in 14 episodes, is set against the luscious backdrop of summertime Lithuania, where a lost woman (Smiltė Bagdžiūnė) is befriended by a stranger (Monika Bičiunaitė) and led through a series of ritual exercises towards the formation of a cult or political cell. The story is deeply mysterious, yet the strangely compelling scenarios, each with a cliffhanger, leave the mind racing. What-if’s on a cosmological scale.

Mark Aerial Waller’s unique films almost come from another dimension, from a position shared with the science fiction and mystery writing of Adolfo Bioy Casares or Philip K Dick.

Time Together was commissioned by the Centre For Contemporary Art Vilnius as part of Midaugas Triennial, The 11th Baltic Triennial Of International Arts with additional funding from The Elephant Trust.

This event has been organised in association with LUX, London.

FILM LENGTH: 72 minutes.

IMAGE:

The original Time Together poster from 2013.

To coincide with the In Place of Architecture exhibition in the Gallery from 6 November – 11 December, this symposium brings together photographers, filmmakers, and writers on photography and architecture to examine the role that photography and moving image play in our contemporary interpretation, perception and understanding of the architectural environment.

Keynote speaker: Andrew Higgott, author and co editor of Camera Constructs.

Speakers will include:

#NTUIPOA

Symposium Handout

Click here to download the symposium handout


So much of our experience of architecture is not the result of a first-hand encounter, but is the consequence of a photographic image. Photography does not merely facilitate our experience of architecture, it arguably constructs that experience – much of what we see has been decided by the photographer.

In Place of Architecture brought together a group of contemporary artists to explore the role that photography and moving image play in our interpretation, perception and understanding of the architectural environment. Artists included:

Peter Ainsworth, Michele Allen, Emily Andersen, Peter Bobby,  Tim Daly, Charlotte Fox, Fergus Heron, Esther Johnson, Andy Lock, Fiona Maclaren (view in IE), Guy Moreton, Martin NewthEmily Richardson.

A programme of events and activities was also curated to compliment the themes highlighted by the exhibition.

#NTUIPOA

Bonington Film Nights are the latest addition to the Gallery calendar that will punctuate the existing exhibition programme 5 – 6 times a year.

Taking inspiration from the legendary film events that occurred nearly 40 years ago in the Gallery, these screenings will showcase artist films of historical and contemporary importance, frequently collaborating with organisations and individuals from outside the University.

The first season of screenings has been curated by Nottingham-based artist and curator Joshua Lockwood, with the first event focusing on experimental artist films from the 1960s and 1970s.

This event has been organised in association with LUX, London and will feature, Beverly and Tony Conrad, John Latham, Len LyeSteina and Woody Vasulka, Guy Sherwin and Paul Sharits.

The majority of these films will be shown in 16 mm.

Event view. Steina & Woody Vasulka, Solo for Three, 1974.

Header image taken from Beverly and Tony Conrad’s Straight and Narrow, 1970.
Courtesy of Beverly and Tony Conrad and LUX, London.


Bonington Gallery is very pleased to present QAI/GB-NGM by Warsaw (Poland) based artist Karol Radziszewski. This exhibition will present archival materials from Radziszewski’s Queer Archives Institute (QAI) that focusses on Central and Eastern European queer history and culture.

Consistent with previous QAI presentations, this exhibition will connect to its locality by featuring materials related to Nottingham’s own queer history and culture. This site specificity is reflected in the title of the exhibition that utilises Nottingham’s International Organization for Standardization (ISO) location code ‘GB–NGM’.

Alongside archival materials from the QAI, the exhibition will feature artworks and ongoing bodies of work by Radziszewski.

The QAI

Established by Radziszewski in November 2015, the QAI is a non-profit artist-run organization dedicated to the research, collection, digitalisation, presentation, exhibition, analysis and artistic interpretation of queer archives, with a special focus on the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. The QAI is a long-term project open to transnational collaboration with artists, activists and academic researchers. The Institute carries out a variety of activities and projects – from exhibitions, publications, lectures and installations to performances.

Artist Biography

Karol Radziszewski (b. 1980) lives and works in Warsaw (Poland), where he received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. He works with film, photography, installations and creates interdisciplinary projects. His archive-based methodology crosses multiple cultural, historical, religious, social and gender references. Since 2005 he has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine. He is the founder of the Queer Archives Institute (2015). His work has been presented in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; New Museum, New York; VideoBrasil, São Paulo; TOP Museum, Tokyo; Kunsthaus Graz, Austria; Cobra Museum, Amsterdam; Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow and Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz. He has participated in several international biennales including PERFORMA 13, New York; 7th Göteborg Biennial; 4th Prague Biennial; 15th WRO Media Art Biennale and recently The Baltic Triennial 14.

In 2021, The Power of Secrets dedicated to Radziszewski’s archival practice was published by Sternberg Press.

Header image credit: Karol Radziszewski, Afterimages, film still, 2018.

Exhibition Resources:

The exhibition has been curated by Tom Godfrey, Director of Bonington Gallery.
Supported by Joshua Lockwood-Moran, Tamsin Greaves (NTU Placement) and Rachael Mackerness (NTU Placement).
Technicians: Harry Freestone, James E Smith, Claire Davies, Emily Stollery.
Thanks to The Sparrows Nest for the generous support, advice and loan of the publications.


It is happening again.
Here, the Gold Ones were.
We’ve heard that before.
But this time it was flatter.

So, as we were saying.
It’s an original story.
No, this is an origin story.
Everyone already knows this.

Everywhen, here and there.
This is what we always said.
Mis-shaped and not in proportion.
As though seen for the first time.

This is an explainer: Following on from Reactor’s residency in 2021, they return with a new video installation that describes what came before. Digital animation, mobile sculpture and choreographed performance combine to please the ears and eyes. Gather round for the reveal, succumb to each and every tall tale told, even when this belief is unfounded.

Special thanks to Adam Sinclair (Animation), Lotti V Closs (Additional Modeling Support), Jim Brouwer (AV Consultant), Rebecca Lee, Alison Lloyd and NTU Fine Art students (Voices) for collaborating on Here, the Gold Ones flatter.

About Reactor

Reactor is an art collective, comprising Susie Henderson, Niki Russell and an undisclosed number of secret members. Recent and forthcoming projects include: ‘Ivan Poe’, online, Kunstraum (London), Southwark Park Galleries (London), Quad (Derby) and Hexham Arts Centre, ‘The Gold Ones’, Radar (Loughborough), Plymouth Art Weekender, Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Gallery North (Newcastle) and xero, kline & coma (London), ‘Log!c ?stem’, Flux Factory (New York), ‘Dummy Button’, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin). 



Celebrating five pioneers of the poster

This exhibition celebrated the collaboration between two typographic forces: Alan Kitching, a leading practitioner in letterpress, typography and design; and Monotype, global trailblazers in type and home to some of the world’s most popular typefaces.

The exhibition featured the Alan Kitching Collection which celebrated the lives of five very influential graphic designers: Tom Eckersley, Abram Games, FHK Henrion, Josef Müller-Brockmann, and Paul Rand.

The show revealed the process behind the making of the Collection; following Alan’s journey from research and sketches, through the Monotype archive, to Alan’s workshop and the finished printed pieces.

#NTUAlanKitching #Monotype

Design Your Own NTU Monogram

During the exhibition, students at Nottingham Trent University and visitors of the exhibition were invited to design their very own personalised monogram to be in with a chance of winning a limited edition print from the Alan Kitching Collection. The rules were simple; the monogram had to:

1) include your own initials
2) use one letter from the typefaces used in the Alan Kitching Collection. The subsequent letters could come from anywhere: another typeface, hand-drawn, a found letter…
3) be rendered in a way that it tells us something about the designer.

Entries were then uploaded with the hashtag #NTUmonogram to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

The competition ended on Sunday 18 October 2015, and the winner (selected by Alan Kitching himself) was announced on Thursday 22 October.

Read all about the winning entry and the runners-up in this story on our blog.

To find out more, read the full competition details.


From Our Blog

This is how too,
When the time is right,
The Hands gather together,
To GO again.

I see that,
From your perspective,
The lines fall into focus,
As though directed from above.

The life of the models,
Informs the Fourth World,
Their flickering motion,
Stirs the Soup.

This is a spoiler: For one day only, within Reactor’s current exhibition Here, the Gold Ones flatter, a choreographed performance brings the models to life. Helping Hands slip easily into particular models as though they were made to fit. The path of the models is straight and runs right round. Over-cycles the hoop turns and reality dissolves, Hands become those from the past and youse can watch from within the corral.

Special thanks to Ellen Angus, Rebecca Beinart, Pádraig Condron , Beth Kettel, Nastassja Simensky, Reece Straw and Aisling Ward for performing in The life of the models.


North Korea reinterpreted on instant film

A joint exhibition by photographer Chris Barrett and researcher Gianluca Spezza

Under Kim Jong Un’s leadership, North Korea has made a conscious decision to be more proactive in the media world. In 2013 we saw the very first live tweeted image of the North Korean leader, from mainstream Western media.

Icons of Rhetoric (IoR) offered a different approach to documenting North Korea, merging established news media practices with more contemporary ones, drawing particular attention to social media.

“While researching an article about an Instagram account claiming to be the official outlet of North Korean news, I started to think about the visual representation of North Korea.

The idea of the project became a reflection on our engagement with modern media techniques, our consumption of images and our knowledge of this ‘most closed off country in the world’ that is the DPRK, all this interwoven with the notion of democratized propaganda.”

Chris Barrett, photographer and curator

By reinterpreting images that already exist in the public domain, Icons of Rhetoric played on an aesthetic of authenticity.

Read more about the Icons of Rhetoric research project.

Follow #IconsofRhetoric on social media:

@IconsofRhetoric
@KazakhPilot (Gianluca Spezza)
facebook.com/IconsOfRhetoric
instagram.com/iconsofrhetoric

Exhibition Resources

From our blog

The title Soft Painting aims to draw our attention to the actual physical qualities of a painting rather than acting as an introduction to an image or to suggest a narrative.  Simon Callery creates paintings that communicate on a physical level.  A painting can be soft or hard as much as it can be red or green.

From Monday 13 – Wednesday 29 April Simon worked in the gallery space with a selected group of Nottingham Trent BA (Hons) Fine Art students and Nottingham-based artists, to produce three large-scale works.  Rolls of canvas were washed and prepared for saturation in pigmented distempers  – a process where the industrial starch is removed from the canvas and the dense and highly coloured medium is washed into the softened fabric at high temperature.  These worked canvasses were then hung off frames to dry before being cut up, sorted and sewn into the formal configurations of soft paintings.

From Thursday 30 April – Friday 15 May the Gallery took the form of a contemporary gallery space, where the outcomes of the making process were realised in a final staged exhibition.

We caught up with Simon at his London-based studio for a behind the scenes look at his collection and to view his work in progress:

For the duration of this exhibition the Gallery became a space for learning where the connections between the making, installing and exhibition of artwork were exposed.  The public were invited to witness and engage with the entire process.

Participants shared their images on Instagram using the hashtag #SoftPainting, you can read more about how the project evolved on our Latest News page.

Exhibition Resources

From our Blog