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Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs is a solo exhibition by artist Stephen Willats.

A pioneer of international conceptual art, Stephen Willats has spent six decades concentrating on ideas that today are ever-present in contemporary art: communication, social engagement, active spectatorship, and self-organisation.

During the early 1970s, while living in Nottingham and teaching at the Nottingham College of Art and Design (now Nottingham Trent University), Willats began several interactive projects exploring the relationship between artist and audience, and people in private and public space. Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs (1971/2) saw him work with four tennis clubs in the city – all socially, economically and physical separate – with the idea of uniting different social groups within a shared process.

This exhibition features artwork and archive materials from Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs, on loan to Bonington Gallery from Nottingham City Museums & Galleries. Accompanying it is a new film and photographic series created during the artist’s recent visits to the original tennis clubs, and work produced during Willats’ early years in Nottingham that proved influential to his subsequent career.

Tennis Tournament

Join us for a restaging of the Tennis Tournament that happened at the conclusion of the original project, taking place on the launch day of this exhibition. Stephen will work with members of The Park Tennis Club to re-model the game of tennis based on their reasons for joining the club – using this site and experience as a simulation of a transformed society.

Header image credit: Stephen Willats, Tennis Super Girls, 1971/72

About the artist

For six decades, Stephen Willats (born in London in 1943) has concentrated on ideas that today are ever-present in contemporary art: communication, social engagement, active spectatorship and self-organisation, and has initiated many seminal multi-media art projects. He has situated his pioneering practice at the intersection between art and other disciplines such as cybernetics – the hybrid post-war science of communication – advertising, systems research, learning theory, communications theory and computer technology. In so doing, he has constructed and developed a collaborative, interactive and participatory practice grounded in the variables of social relationships, settings and physical realities. Rather than presenting visitors with icons of certainty he creates a random, complex environment which stimulates visitors to engage in their own creative process.

Willats has exhibited internationally and his work can be found in public collections held by Tate, Arts Council England and The Victoria and Albert Museum.

Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to invite Giorgio Sadotti to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.

(b.1955, Manchester) Sadotti lives and works in London. He gained his MFA at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA, 1981; MA Sculpture at Manchester Polytechnic, Manchester, Britain, 1978; BA Hons at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham, Britain, 1977.

Sadotti will be exhibiting at Bonington Gallery from Friday 24 February until Friday 31 March 2017, in his current solo exhibition, SHAPELESS IMPACT NOT TIME SLOW IS (FLITS BY).

Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include:

Recent group exhibitions include:

ABOUT THE FINE ART LIVE LECTURE SERIES

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.

Following a call for papers last year, we are delighted to announce that the Building Bridges Conference will take place from the 4 – 7 April 2022. The conference is part of the Formations programme run by researchers from the Postcolonial Study Centre at Nottingham Trent University and Bonington Gallery.

Hosting a wide range of presenters from across the globe, papers explore contemporary topical issues of decolonisation and its socio-political structures. The conference is open to discussions and deconstructions of long-held dominant ideologies and narratives which function to sustain the invisibility of colonial and empirical legacies in the contemporary world. Building Bridges aims to highlight alternative ways of thinking about the world and alternative forms of political practices. By thinking critically about the need to unbuild, to deconstruct, and to destabilise the kind of connections and structures that uphold Eurocentric and colonial frames of reference as ‘universal’, we seek to upend stories of encounter and demonstrate the pervasive influence of conquest narratives in the present day. We are delighted to confirm that our keynote speakers are Professor Avtar Brah and Dr Sophie Chao.

The conference will feature a reading from Leone Ross, from her new novel This One Sky Day. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with the writer, discussing her writing process and her thoughts on creative form in a postcolonial world. 

Take a look at the full conference programme.

Conference Schedule:
4 April
Welcome and Decolonial Imaginings and Intersectional Conversations and Contestations, Professor Avtar Brah

9.45 – 11 am

This presentation will be a both theoretical and political engagement with concepts such as ‘Decolonial’ and ‘Intersectionality’ and how these concepts assume new meanings through their articulation. It will attend to particular instances in and through which they have mapped the social ground of feminist and egalitarian imaginaries.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 1: Gender, the Body, and Oppression

12 – 1.30 pm

Participants: Marietta Kosma, Daniel Yaw Fiaveh, Ndiweteko Jennifer Nghishitende and Lede E Miki Pohshna

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 2: Identity, Diaspora, and Dispossession

2.30 – 4 pm

Participants: Isabel Arce Zelada, Rajbir Samal & Binod Mishra, Ghosun Baaqeel and Victoria V. Chang

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

5 April
Decolonising the Field(s): Insights from the Pacific in an Age of Planetary Unravelling, Dr Sophie Chao

8.45 – 10 am

In this talk, Dr Chao will draw on her collaborative research with Samoan scholar and Lefaoali’i (High Talking Chief) Dion Enari to explore how transdisciplinary, experimental, and decolonial imaginaries can help us better understand and address environmental destruction and social injustice in an epoch of planetary undoing. Such imaginaries must account for the perspectives, interests, and existences of both human and beyond-human communities of life.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 3: Resistance, Representation, and Marginalised Communities

11 am – 12.30 pm

Participants: Shifana P A & Dr Asha Susan Jacob, Md Alamgir Hossain, Bianca Cherechés and Chithira James & Dr Reju George Mathew

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 4: Environmentalism, Conservation, and Decolonisation

1.30 – 3 pm

Participants: Badakynti Nylla Iangngap, Catherine Price, Dr Md Abu Shahid Abdullah and Swapnit Pradhan & Dr Nagendra Kumar

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

6 April
Panel 5: Decolonial Research, Knowledge(s), and Pedagogy

9.45 – 11.30 am

Participants: Atilio Barreda II, Nabeela Musthafa, Dr Opeloge Ah Sam and Sara Bdeir

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 6: Modernity, Higher Education, and Epistemology

12.30 – 2 pm

Participants: Shifana P A & Dr Asha Susan Jacob, Md Alamgir Hossain, Bianca Cherechés and Chithira James & Dr Reju George Mathew

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

7 April
Reading: This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

11.15 am – 12.30 pm

Leone Ross will read from her new novel, This One Sky Day, and will talk to Bethan Evans and the audience about her writing process and decolonisation.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 7: Storytelling, Narrativisation, and Form

1.30 – 3 pm

Participants: Carolina Buffoli, Marine Berthiot, Dr Rachel Gregory Fox and Dr Yasmin Rioux

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

For more information visit the Building Bridges conference website and follow Building Bridges on Twitter.

on Twitter @buildbridgesntu.

Destiny Ekaragha once said that Black British filmmakers were not expected to make films about ordinary family stories and everyday things – like love. This segment foregrounds the transformative nature of the everyday feeling of love in art, writing, and research, while it also helps us to think about how the concept of love is defined, understood, and restricted, if love is understood and represented in limited ways. The free, online events in this segment consider the expression, meaning, contexts, and impact of love by exploring the work of artists, writers and thinkers, emphasising questions of gender, sexuality, race, and culture.

The segment begins with a conversation between Eve Makis and Young Adult fiction writer Nicola Garrard, whose novel about love and canal journeys 29 Locks was recently published by HopeRoad, one of the publishers that we work with very often at the Postcolonial Studies Centre. Later in the segment, we are very excited to welcome Ferdinand Dennis to NTU. His on-campus event with Black Writing in Britain students and book signing will be recorded for a special film event for Formations. Other events in the segment include Formations ‘visits’ to Becky Cullen’s WRAP (Writing, Reading and Pleasure) to join her event with writer Musa Okwonga. In addition, Tom Lockwood-Moran hosts a fascinating book reading and discussion event on the Power of Queer Caribbean Love with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan.

The Formations programme is an online series of free, public events led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.

Young Adult fiction writer Nicola Garrard in conversation with Eve Makis

Tuesday 1 February 2022, 6.30  7.30 pm

This free event is a must for anyone who reads Young Adult fiction or has an interest in writing for young people. Nicola Garrard will be talking about her Young Adult novel, 29 Locks, an unflinching depiction of urban teen life in London. The book was shortlisted in the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition. She will be reading from the book and answering audience questions. Hosted by Eve Makis.

You can purchase Nicola Garrard’s newly published novel online.

Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.

Research Seminar: Jennifer Leetsch on Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing

Wednesday 9 February 2022, 1 – 2 pm

Formations is joining NTU’s English Research Seminar series to welcome researcher Jennifer Leetsch who will talk about her recently published book, Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing.

The book combines careful literary analyses with in-depth discussions of cultural and socio-historical contexts by considering the world-making powers of the old novel form in the third millennium as well as the formative effect of new digital media.

Email Jenni Ramone to reserve your free place. You’ll be sent a link to the Teams meeting and further instructions on how to join.

The Power of Queer Caribbean Love: A Reading and Discussion Event with Shivanee Ramlochan

Wednesday 16 February 2022, 6 – 7.30 pm

Bonington Gallery and NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre warmly invite all queer lovers, and allied others, to a belated valentine date: diving the depths with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan. The evening will include readings from Ramlochan’s striking first collection, Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (2017), plus exclusive new writing, and a discussion contextualising queerness and literary Caribbeanness, with NTU literary researcher Thomas Lockwood-Moran (Midlands4Cities-funded doctoral candidate). This discussion seeks to invoke public engagement, which will be heartily welcomed, to empower an exploration of queer love —love of others and crucial self-love. Never avoiding the harsh global realities of oppression and its traumas experienced by queer persons, always multiplied for queer persons of colour, this event will consider the literary throb of Ramlochan’s queer heart as a stalwart shield against colonial oppressions past, present and into the future.

The first 20 Eventbrite sign-ups for this event will receive a free copy of Ramlochan’s stunning poetic spectre Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (2017).

All Eventbrite sign-ups will receive a 20% discount code for Ramlochan’s poetry collection via Pepal Tree Press.

Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.

Creative Writing Workshop: How do I write thee…? – A workshop on writing ‘Love’ with Nora Nadjarian. Led by Eve Makis

Wednesday 23 February 2022, 6.30 – 8 pm

Let us find the ways in which fresh perspectives can make love intimate or silly, surprising or sexy, romantic or sarcastic in our writing. In this generative workshop we will be looking at examples of contemporary poetry and flash fiction that will dispel any clichés and energise rehashed ideas you may have on the subject. You will be given prompts to write your unique pieces.

Open to all skill levels.

Creative Writing Workshop: How do I write thee…? (Part 2) – A workshop on writing ‘Love’ with Nora Nadjarian. Led by Eve Makis

Tuesday 5 April 2022, 6.30 – 8 pm

Back by popular demand, Nora Nadjarian will be leading a second workshop on how to write about ‘love’. As before, you will be encouraged to approach the subject in fresh and surprising ways, and given prompts to write your unique pieces. The generative workshop will give insight into contemporary poetry and short fiction and energise rehashed ideas you may have on the subject of “love”.

Open to all skill levels, and limited to 20 participants.

Empowerment Doll-making workshop with artist Rita Kappia

Saturday 19 March, 10:30 am – 12 noon

Following Rita’s hugely popular [online] doll-making workshop in 2021, we are very pleased to welcome Rita back to deliver an in person workshop. In this workshop, you can make your own Empowerment Doll using a range of common materials. Advance registration is required and all materials will be provided on the day. The workshop is open to all, and may be of particular interest to young people age 8-12; younger children supported by an adult; or adults and older children with an interest in dollmaking, textiles, fabrics, or art. All children under 16 must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.

Places are limited to 20 participants.

Ferdinand Dennis on The Black and White Museum

Thursday 24 March 2022, 6 – 7.30 pm

In this free, livestreamed event, Formations audiences will be able to watch critically acclaimed author Ferdinand Dennis‘ visit to NTU English students from the ‘Black Writing in Britain’ module. Ferdinand will read from his newly published collection of short stories, The Black and White Museum, and discuss his work, life, and career.

From Ferdinand Dennis, the critically acclaimed author of the novel Duppy Conqueror, comes The Black and White Museum, a collection of both highly personal and universal short stories. These at their heart reveal the emotional drama of faded love, the loss of individual and shared memory and the wistful longing for home. His stories powerfully portray the black presence in post-Windrush London, with its hurtling gentrification and everyday racism. Ferdinand’s characters gain wisdom and maturity with age but become powerless, as they are less able to change the course of their lives. For some there is the temptation of a return “home” but home, like London, has also moved on and is not the paradise of their memories.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

WRAP Live! with Musa Okwonga

Tuesday 29 March 2022, 7 – 8.30 pm

Musa Okwonga joins Dr Becky Cullen for a discussion about his path from an Eton scholarship, Oxford and the Law, to being a Berlin-based writer with a passion for football. Musa will also be talking about poetry, music, and his fabulous new novel In the End, It Was All About Love. Published by Rough Trade, the book is our WRAP spring title and February’s Notts TV Book Club choice. They’ll also be talking about Musa’s football blog and podcast Stadio and Striking Out, his book collaboration with Arsenal legend Ian Wright

Watch WRAP Live with Musa Okwonga on YouTube.

Archipelago (ˌɑːkɪˈpɛlɪˌɡəʊ) 1. a group of islands 2. a sea studded with islands [C16 (meaning: the Aegean Sea): from Italian archipelago, literally: the chief sea

An exhibition presented by staff from the School of Art & Design that featured experimental practice from a range of art and design disciplines. The works demonstrated the complex process of creation undertaken by practitioners / researchers within the School community.

Artists were asked to consider themselves and their practice as islands, which sit in proximity to other islands. An island could be the work of one practitioner, that of an established collaboration, or a group brought together by a common concern. These islands were represented spatially within the exhibition to create a place of dialogue and exchange.

Lucuna by artist Joy Buttress investigates the current interpretation of lace in contemporary visual culture. Lacuna explored the interface between skin and pattern which is created by lace fabric when worn on the body.

The work in this exhibition portrayed human skin through the use of leather and latex; embedding meaning and emotive boundaries through the application of decoration and pattern. Hand processes that include forms of stitch, and machine processes of laser etching and digital embroidery, were combined to create unfamiliar surfaces.

Joy’s research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

This exhibition explored how the ritualistic activities of these groups and individuals can be realised by actors and interpreted in moving image.

Exhibiting artist Ben Judd used performance and video to explore notions of scepticism and belief, freedom and immersion, by positioning himself and the audience as both participant and observer.

Previous work has explored Ben’s relationship to particular occult and esoteric beliefs such as witchcraft, shamanism and spiritualism; as a sceptic he attempts to test the extent and nature of his own beliefs and preconceptions.

亂 — Confusion, state of chaos.

In the ancient form of mandarin the title represents the creative processes and working practice that facilitated this exhibition. Dance artist Lucia Tong, Dance4 and Nottingham Trent University MA Framework students collaborated to create an immersive and interactive installation – interpreting the meaning of Luàn through movement, installation, photography and textiles.

In September 2012 Nottingham Trent University welcomed the World Event Young Artists 2012 (WEYA), an exciting programme of exhibitions and events as part of the vibrant and globally significant Nottingham finale to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. This directional and unique event brought together 1,000 artists, from 100 nations, over a period of ten days and was the first of its kind in the world. It was hosted by a number of key partner institutions offering world class venues, of which Nottingham Trent University is proud to be a part.

For full details including event listings and galleries please visit the World Event Young Artists (now UK New Artists) webpages.

5 Curators. 5 Exhibitions of moving image.

Five by Five: Unloud 

Curator: Professor Duncan Higgins, Nottingham Trent University

Northern Russia has been described as being shrouded in a rare serene stillness and beauty undermined by the decaying presence of evil. Unloud looked at this idea: a place of limits, a frontier or an extreme situation incorporating the extremes of climate, geography and nature, faith, brutality, beauty and fantasy.

Five by Five: Presenting Absence: Moving Images of Palestine

Curator: Dr Anna Ball, Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent University

A lost homeland, a dispossessed population, a missing film archive: images of absence haunt Palestinian national consciousness. Bringing together works by leading film-makers and video artists, this exhibition explored the dynamic relationship between presence and absence in moving images from or about Palestine.

Five by Five: Chromista 

Curators: Geoff Litherland and Jim Boxall, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University

Chromista are water organisms that photosynthesise, taking advantage of any light that breaks through the surface. Likewise the films that were selected for Chromista exploit the physical surface of the projected image; light and imagery is abstracted to create works whose process of creation dictates the final image.

Five by Five: Alumni Filmmakers

A showcase of work from the narrative to the abstract, each day focussed on a different artist. A group of Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design alumni film-makers were invited to screen one of their own works and two further short films which have either influenced or compliments their chosen piece.

Five by Five: Water, love runs down

Curator: Jenny Chamarette, Department of Film Studies, Queen Mary, University of London

Water has the capacity to distort and magnify light and sound: it bends and reshapes these elemental parts of the moving image to create something altogether different from what we might usually experience. In this programme drawn from moving image artists, filmmakers and public information broadcasts, water is both an inspiration and a distraction, for viewers and filmmakers alike.