Moving on from the success of Magic Light 2014, Lighting the Future: No Boundaries was an eclectic mix of lighting designs and installations by product and furniture design final year students and alumni from Nottingham Trent University.
All pieces within the show were representations of new and recently created designs, many of which push the boundaries of lighting, materials and design.
Alongside Lighting the Future: No Boundaries, and situated at the entrance of Nottingham Trent University’s Newton building, 170 was a ghostly montage of light inspired by images of the University at night.
Lighting the Future: No Boundaries was part of Nottingham Light Night 2015.
Download your copy of the official Light Night 2015 What’s On Guide
Crafting Anatomies placed the human body at the centre of a multi-disciplinary dialogue; exploring how this entity has been interpreted, crafted and reimagined in historical, contemporary and future contexts.
The exhibition dissected attitudes and approaches towards contexts of the body by showcasing visionary practices of leading international artists, clinicians and designers. These items were featured alongside anatomical exhibits selected from historical collections including films from The Wellcome Trust archive.
Organs crafted by silk worms, bespoke jewellery cultured from human skin cells, and couture garments constructed using plastic surgery cutting techniques were just some of the speculative projects that were on display.
43 practitioners in total took part, including, Shelly Goldsmith, Amy Congdon, Richard Arm, John Pacey-Lowrie, Juliana Sissons, Karen Ingham, Marloes ten Bhömer, The Human Harp Project, and many more.
A series of talks, demonstrations and workshops accompanied the exhibition, culminating in a symposium which highlighted the rigour in approaches to this subject by the individuals featured in the show.
This exhibition was curated by Amanda Briggs-Goode, Rhian Solomon and Katherine Townsend – members of the Creative Textiles Research Group at Nottingham Trent University.
Crafting prosthetic eyes
Wednesday 14 January 2015, 5 pm – 9 pm
As part of the Special Preview Event ocularist John Pacey-Lowrie gave a demonstration on how to craft prosthetic eyes. John has 35 years’ experience in bespoke ocular prosthetics. He is one of an extremely small group of talented practitioners who design, manufacture and hand-paint ocular prostheses.
Pattern cutting inspired by plastic surgery
Saturday 17 January 2015, 10 am – 3 pm
Surgical techniques in cloth to create simple garments with Juliana Sissons.
Crafting anatomies to train surgeons
Wednesday 21 January 2015, 3.30 pm – 4.30 pm
Composite material specialist Richard Arm talked about his groundbreaking project that simulates human hearts to train surgeons.
Friday 30 January 2015
This one day symposium explored the curious practices of a selection of Crafting Anatomies’ exhibitors, highlighting a preoccupation with the human condition in a breadth of exploratory contexts.
Enquiries
If you have any questions or enquiries about the Crafting Anatomies events listing please email craftinganatomies@ntu.ac.uk
The Crafting Anatomies project places the human body at the centre of a multi-disciplinary dialogue; exploring how this entity has been interpreted, crafted and re-imagined in historical, contemporary and future contexts.
This one-day symposium will explore the curious practices of a selection of Crafting Anatomies’ exhibitors, highlighting a preoccupation with the human condition in a breadth of exploratory contexts.
Delegates will also have the opportunity to visit the Crafting Anatomies exhibition in conjunction with this event and see ocularist and Crafting Anatomies exhibitor, John Pacey-Lowrie, as he demonstrates his craft of creating prosthetic eyes.
© Marloes ten Bhömer Courtesy Stanley Picker Gallery
UK DESIGN FOR PERFORMANCE 2011–2014
Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) in collaboration with the V&A Museum and Nottingham Trent University.
Make/Believe brought together an extraordinary range of contemporary designers and artists in performance to show a collection of new work – all made in the last four years. Revealing the ideas and processes behind visually arresting performance made by UK designers here and internationally.
The exhibition featured work that defines the edges of this art form; in industry and music festivals, large scale events such as the Olympics, Paralympics, community opera, found space and promenade performance, in digital, heritage and media contexts. It also gave praise to the intimate and highly valued work that designers are currently doing in education, health and various community settings.
Make/Believe at NTU was the first stop in a touring exhibition; selected works were subsequently shown at the Prague Quadrennial in June 2015, now currently on show at the V&A for nine months from July 2015, before moving on to festivals and venues throughout the UK from March 2016.
Click here to download the exhibition handout
A richly diverse collection of the futuristic and the retrospective: Knitting Nottingham challenged popular perceptions of knitting as cosy and nostalgic; showcasing creative design, art, technology and research across a wide range of knit-inspired work from internationally renowned designers, artists and researchers.
As part of Nottingham Trent University’s 170 Years of Art and Design event series, it celebrated the transformational role played by Nottingham in the growth of the knitting industry and knit technology, and provoked a serious question: how far can we stretch our ideas about knitting?
The message was don’t get comfortable; contrary to what we might think, the relationship between knitting and pushing the boundaries of technology is extremely close.
Stunning garments, 3D prints, performance footwear, knitted conductive textile technology, priceless historical artefacts, a tea set made from electro-plated knit, and working state-of-the-art knitting machinery were just some of the exhibits on show which demonstrated the innovative and challenging nature of knit today.
View a selection of images from the Knitting Nottingham exhibition by visiting the 170 years website.
As part of Nottingham Trent University’s celebration of 170 Years of Art and Design heritage, we supported BBC Radio Nottingham’s Big Poppy Knit in support of the Royal British Legion’s annual Poppy Appeal.
A commemorative poppy specially designed by Sir Paul Smith was on show during the exhibition.
Click here to download the exhibition handout
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.
A solo exhibition by Debra Swann consolidating her artistic research through sculpture, video and photography.
The show was an exploration of historical domestic spaces and the personas that may evolve through these spaces. Thinking about the repetition of tasks and the familiar sites of the home, narratives are created to comment on relentless labour and the strangeness of the comings and goings of the home.
A number of historic locations become backdrops, stages or sites for making work. The re-contextualization of objects made for such places took the viewer through subtle juxtapositions of time and reality. Blurring the relationship between fact and fiction the viewer could question what they are looking at and the process by which history is written and how we establish truth.
Summer Lodge celebrated its 5 Year Anniversary in 2014. For ten days each July, the Fine Art studios and workshops of Nottingham Trent University are transformed and play host to a gathering of thirty diverse artists.
As part of this celebration the Gallery was used as a testing space, giving the public a glimpse into the activities of the Lodgers through live stream to screens in the foyer before being used as an exhibition space.
The Lodge was a collective space in which to undertake experiments, pursue new ideas and allow unexpected leaps of imagination. Participants in the Summer Lodge came together with the aim of initiating new dialogues and critical exchange through engaging in a period of sustained studio / workshop practice.
This years participants included artists from Nottingham Trent University; Sheffield Hallam University; Bergen Academy of Art and Design; Harrington Mills Studios; One Thoresby Street; and Backlit Studios.
At the completion of the Lodge, the Gallery was opened to the public to showcase the diverse range of work created across the ten days.
Summer Lodge: 30 June – 11 July 2014 (public could watch activities unfolding via live stream in the foyer)
Exhibition: 14 – 22 July 2014
For more information, and for ongoing documentation during the Lodge, visit: www.summerlodge.org.
As part of Nottingham Trent University’s 170th Anniversary of Art and Design, this exhibition showcased a collection of images by acclaimed architectural photographer, Martine Hamilton Knight D.Litt (hon).
The exhibition looked back over the last 20 years in recognition of the innovative and iconic buildings that make up Nottingham’s skyline.
Featuring the work of Hopkins Architects, this exhibition included the stunning Inland Revenue building, Nottingham Trent University’s Newton and Arkwright building and the University of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus, as well as other Nottingham Trent University buildings.
Venue
Newton Building
Goldsmith Street
Nottingham
NG1 4BU
In this exhibition artist Sean Cummins explored a found image, depicting a control room of an experimental nuclear reactor from 1963. Cummins used this image as a catalyst for an exhibition of paintings.
The exhibition title refers to both Van Gogh’s early masterpiece The Potato Eaters and the notion of cold fusion, a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that occurs at room temperature.
This series of paintings makes an unusual connection between early modernist painting and the utopian aspirations of the creators of nuclear technology. There is a humorous juxtaposition between the agrarians depicted in The Potato Eaters and scientists operating the nuclear power station. A depiction of subsistence and the fiction of cold fusion and its limitless supply of energy.
Cummins knowingly played on paintings’ history and processes, as his images aspired to a collapse of space and time.
