LOCATION: BONINGTON LECTURE THEATRE
Featuring works by, George Barber, Storm De Hirsch, Daina Krumins, Alia Syed
Nottingham based collective Annexinema organise screenings of experimental film and visionary moving image, often in interesting and unusual locations. Recent events have been held in disused shops, medieval churches, and former factories. Programmes are curated thematically and bring together work by well-known experimental filmmakers, contemporary artists, and archival oddities.
For Bonington Film Night #7 Annexinema have selected a series of film works in response to our current exhibition All Men By Nature Desire To Know curated by Joshua Lockwood.
Several of the films will be shown in original 16mm film.
Further reading: http://annexinema.org
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to invite Alan Michael to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.
(b.1967 Paisley, Scotland) Alan lives and works in London. His work combines existing styles and codes of painting, photography and text to highlight tensions between displays of labour and casual under-performance. While making allusions to an unresolved relationship between photorealism, Pop and the ‘realness’ of street photography, his works often refer to various processes used to generate the ideas, circuits of reception and, ultimately, the finished works themselves.
Alan is currently exhibiting in a group exhibition entitled All Men By Nature Desire To Know, which is on at Bonington Gallery until Friday 17 February 2017.
Recent solo exhibitions include:
Recent group exhibitions include:
The Fine Art Live Lecture Series is an initiative by Nottingham Trent University’s Fine Art course, whereby creative practitioners are invited to deliver a lecture to current students. The lectures are also open to staff, alumni and the general public.
The lectures take place during term-time only.
Here is a selection of photos from the opening of out show, All Men By Nature Desire To Know
The history of painting will be explored in a new exhibition of four contemporary artists whose work broadens and challenges our understanding of the traditional medium. All Men By Nature Desire to Know – at Bonington Gallery from Friday 13 January to Friday 17 February – will present a variety of works which examine the evolution of the art form and reflect how it’s been influenced over time. The exhibition – curated by Nottingham-based artist Joshua Lockwood – features works by Stefania Batoeva, Flora Klein, Audrey Reynolds and Alan Michael. There will be an accompanying text by Rachal Bradley.
“Painting is the world’s oldest art form and hasn’t died out by any means,” says Josh. “It has changed considerably through history and is used in different ways today than used to be. Today there are many ways to create an image, instantly and with more simplicity than by painting. Contemporary painters adopt these new modes of image making to inform their painting, opening up dialogues of their position within the present.
“Technological development, such as photography and more, has made painting more indefinite, allowing the movement of painting towards abstract art, transgressing Western painting historically of being the art of representation.
“Painting is quite a difficult medium as it demands your full attention. You can look at a painting for five seconds or hours in the action of analysis. As such it can be hard for viewers to unpack for we are used to seeing imagery taken through a lens.
“This exhibition brings together four contemporary practitioners who are working today, adding to the continuing narrative of the medium of painting. Influences from the past are absorbed and rejected creating a fresh reality for each painting.”
Here is a selection of artists and their works for our exhibition All Men By Nature Desire to Know
Stefania Batoeva (b. 1981 Sofia, Bulgaria) is a London-based artist who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2014. Her paintings cross between the traditional form of painting and sculpture – often created as site specific work.
Batoeva’s work also blurs the line between abstract and figure-based painting, exploring ideas around the subconscious and memory.
The paintings are difficult to categorise – as Batoeva captures moments in vivid colours which feel similar to distant memories; almost-recognisable figures obscured by heavy brush-strokes, smears and scratch – or the figures themselves represented through loose brush-stokes themselves, almost disappearing into the background.
Stefania will be producing new works specifically for All Men By Nature Desire To Know. Find out more:
Recent solo exhibitions include:
Recent group exhibitions include:
Audrey Reynolds lives and works in London and Folkestone, and studied at Bath College of Art and at Chelsea College of Art, London.
Reynolds’ work is a mix of sculpture, installation and painting – all of which incorporate seemingly random objects and materials including modelling clay and household paints, as well as fitted carpets, ribbons and brass letters.
Layers of paint are built up and scratched away, with the found objects embedded into the surface of double-sided paintings, creating sparse but carefully arranged compositions. On the other hand, installations of rugs and carpets blur the line between a functional object and an artwork. In her writing, Reynolds exposes fragments of everyday life, reflecting on the ordinary before slipping into more abstract passages where it isn’t clear quite who or what is being written about, while still conveying a sense of something personal… in a way, something quite similar to her paintings.
Audrey will be producing new works specifically for All Men By Nature Desire To Know.
Solo exhibitions include:
A collection of her writing will be published by AkermanDaly in Spring 2017.
Flora Klein was born in 1988 Bern, Switzerland, she currently lives and works in Berlin. She Graduated with a BA in Fine Arts at ECAL, Lausanne in 2013.
Layers of acrylics are used to build up abstract blocks of colour with contrasting strands spreading across the top of the base layers like ribbons. Although Klein’s work is easy to identify in style (the paintings often share a palette of bold oranges, browns and reds, and recurring lines and shapes can also be found between the works), none of the works have a clear subject or even a main focal point.
As a result, a lot of the meaning is left up to the viewer – the paintings don’t immediately suggest a clear emotion, are neither masculine or feminine, and the titles don’t give many clues either.
Find out more about Flora’s recent exhibitions:
For this exhibition, Flora will be showing new works which have not been seen in the UK before.
Alan Michael was born in 1967 in Paisley, Scotland, he now lives and works in London.
Michael’s paintings are often photorealistic renderings of everyday objects, taken from obscure reference photos – or film stills as is the case with his latest work included in All Men By Nature Desire To Know.
The other side to Michael’s work includes text-based paintings which also borrow from varied reference points – including brand names and pop culture references – as well as referring to other artworks and art movements.
All of Michael’s work seems to hone in on meticulous details, but the meaning behind the paintings is harder to pin down. The mix of text and imagery sometimes seem to be at odds with each other, or at least have little obvious links. Still, the works draw the viewer in; inviting you to try and unpick them and the intentions of the painter.
Alan Michael has produced new works specifically for All Men By Nature Desire To Know. Here are a couple of sneak peeks:
Recent solo exhibitions include:
Recent group exhibitions include:
We live in an era of globalisation and interconnectivity, with an ever-growing amount of information and images easily available at our fingertips.
Painting, once the dominant medium in western visual culture, is now just one in a range of contemporary art genres. It is clear painting will not return to the pre-eminent position it once had, but will any other visual medium achieve the status painting held?
All Men By Nature Desire To Know brings together four invited artists who see painting as a significant part of their practice. The history of painting is continuously being overlaid and re-written by artists for whom the act of painting is both an accumulative and contentious process – influences are being absorbed and rejected.
The artists within this exhibition produce work that broadens and challenges the traditional form of painting, bringing their personal histories to their practice as well as traversing what has gone before. Each painting is self-contained as well as being part of a continuum; painting practice is opening out into other spaces, creating dialogues and furthering debate.
With accompanying text by Rachal Bradley.
Curated by Joshua Lockwood.
All images courtesy of Julian Lister and the artists.
Stefania Batoeva (b. 1981 Sofia, Bulgaria) lives and works in London. Graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2014. Stefania has produced works specifically for All Men By Nature Desire To Know.
Recent solo exhibitions include:
Recent group exhibitions include:
Flora Klein (*1988 Bern, Switzerland) lives and works in Berlin. Graduated with a BA in Fine Arts at ECAL, Lausanne in 2013. Flora is showing new works which have not been seen in the UK before.
Recent solo exhibition:
Flora Klein, Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf and Oracle, Berlin, 2016.
Recent group exhibitions include:
Alan Michael (b.1967 Paisley, Scotland) lives and works in London. Alan has created new works specifically for All Men By Nature Desire To Know.
Recent solo exhibitions include:
Recent group exhibitions include:
Audrey Reynolds lives and works in London and Folkestone. Studied at Bath College of Art and at Chelsea College of Art, London. Audrey has produced new works specifically for All Men By Nature Desire To Know.
Solo exhibitions include:
A collection of her writing will be published by AkermanDaly in Spring 2017.
Rachal Bradley (b Blackpool, 1979) currently lives and works in Nottingham where she is a lecturer in the Fine Art department of Nottingham Trent University. An ongoing archive of Bradley’s writing is to be found at www.rachalbradley.eu.
Joshua Lockwood (b. 1991) lives and works in Nottingham. Joshua is an artist based at One Thoresby Street, he is also a curator and co-director of TG Gallery. Joshua was also in residence at Lincoln University & The Collection, Lincoln from 2014-2015
Recent group exhibitions:
S1/OTS, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham 2015
Previous curated exhibitions and film programmes include:
Ahead of the preview of All Men By Nature Desire To Know next Thursday, check out some install shots for a sneak peek at the new work in the show.
