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.
From dying fabrics for costumes and hangings for nine touring companies of the musical Hair in 1970, to producing an atelier collection of hand-dyed garments and accessories under her own label from 1981-2005, Marian Clayden’s unique and luxurious designs are virtuoso Bohemian chic.
This vibrant and diverse exhibition showcased examples of Clayden’s work with influences from Grand Opera, Iran, Kabuki and ethnic dance. Clayden’s trail-blazing textiles and garments blurred the boundaries between art, textiles and fashion.
Born and raised in Preston, Marian Clayden studied painting at Nottingham School of Art and prepared for a career as a primary school teacher. Her passion for painting developed into an interest in textiles-as-art while living in Australia with her young family. Their move to California in 1967 led to collaborations with stage/television designer Bob Mackie in Los Angeles and the New York fashion designers, Georgio di Sant’Angelo and Mary McFadden.
Under her own label, Clayden Inc, she forged a high-profile list of clients for her evening wear, including Lisa Marie Presley, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Between 11 – 17 April 2014, Emma Cocker (Senior Lecturer in Fine Art), will be joined by artist Nikolaus Gansterer (Vienna) and choreographer Mariella Greil (Vienna), inhabiting Bonington Gallery as an experimental ‘method laboratory’ (entitled Beyond The Line) for staging an encounter between choreography, drawing and writing; between body, mark and text.
Beyond The Line is conceived as a pilot project in preparation for Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (2014 – 2016), a large-scale international, interdisciplinary collaboration involving Cocker, Gansterer and Greil for exploring the points of slippage as the practices of drawing, dance and writing enter into dialogue, overlap and collide. Through processes of reciprocal exchange, dialogue and negotiation between the key researchers, Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line will interrogate 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. Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line is funded by FWF/PEEK art based research grant of Austria.
In this research seminar, Cocker, Gansterer and Greil will reflect and elaborate on their collaborative research, and introduce the key ideas and concerns of their forthcoming project, Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line.
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
