Nottingham Black Archive was founded in 2009 by Panya Banjoko with the aim of researching, collecting and preserving Black history, heritage and culture in Nottingham, from the earliest time to the present day. The collection consists of artefacts donated by the community and interviews collected through project work. Today, the archive holds a growing collection of oral histories, photographs, articles, and books dating back to the 1940s.
In 2012, Nottingham Black Archive began to document the experiences of those who came from the Caribbean to England during the Windrush period. Journeys to Nottingham is a collection of narratives, photographs, and ephemera from people who travelled from the Caribbean to Nottingham during the Windrush era. It is a snapshot of why they came, what they did, and where they worked on their arrival to the city.
Beyond the materials featured in this exhibition, there are full oral history interviews which are housed within Nottingham Black Archive and serve as a record to mark the journeys of people from the Caribbean to England.
Panya Banjoko is a UK-based writer and poet whose work has been published in various anthologies. Banjoko is currently completing a PhD at Nottingham Trent University that focuses on Politics in Poetry and the Role of African Caribbean Writers and Networks in the 1970s and 80s. She has performed widely, including at the 2012 Olympic Games, coordinates a Black Writers network, and is a patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.
With the launch of the CAMPUS Independent Study Programme, we will be hosting a series of talks by the CAMPUS faculty exploring alternative modes of education, decolonial practices, Black studies, and anti-fascist movements.
Elvira Dyangani Ose’s internationally acclaimed curatorial work is committed to the histories and legacies of colonialism in contemporary African art.
Elvira Dyangani Ose was recently appointed Director of The Showroom. Dyangani Ose was Senior Curator at Creative Time, a New York-based non-profit public arts organisation. Currently a lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, Dyangani Ose is a member of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada and is an independent curator. She was Curator of the eighth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary art (GIBCA 2015) and Curator, International Art at Tate Modern (2011 – 2014). She also recently joined Tate Modern’s Advisory Council.
If you would like to attend this event please RSVP to confirm your attendance.
CAMPUS is a year-long and city-wide independent study programme in curatorial, visual and cultural studies, based on collaborative knowledge production and innovative research practices. It is a free-to-attend programme of monthly closed-door gatherings and free public talks. Taking place in different locations in Nottingham (Nottingham Contemporary, Primary, Bonington Gallery, Backlit), CAMPUS welcomes participants from different backgrounds who wish to engage in conversations about contemporary debates and further explore interdisciplinary practices. CAMPUS is a space of encounter between researchers, practitioners, activists, scholars, institutions and organisations.
“In 1978, prompted by my interest in people’s attitude to photography, from beyond the primitive notion of your soul being stolen when you have your photograph taken, to whatever was the contemporary notion, I mailed an image of myself to the 84 people who at that time shared my surname in the London Phone Directory, hoping that having this in common would serve as an introduction. I asked for a photograph in return, with their name on the back so that I would know who was responding, and a very large percentage complied, but most were also accompanied by incidental information. There were exceptions; a letter saying that there were no photographs in existence of Doris Jewell, an octogenarian living in Barnes, but I was welcome to go and take one.
This outcome led to me producing ‘London Jewells’, a poster size, four-colour lithographic letter containing a montage of all the photographs received and a précis of the written response. I mailed this poster out to my original list, but omitting the names that the Royal Mail had returned to sender as ‘’unknown at this address’’. This secondary mail out solicited a mixed response, photographs and “wish I’d taken your original letter more seriously” from some of those who had not initially responded and “thanks” from those that had.
I then repeated the process but this time with a similar number of Jewells in the USA, utilising the Los Angeles and Miami phone directories. The response was markedly different, not in volume but by the amount of lithographically produced photographs in the form of Christmas and model agency cards etc., and also far more information on lineage with family trees going back to Bishop Jewell of Salisbury in the 16th Century.
I then framed and exhibited all this material at the 1983 Summer Show at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
In 2009 a publisher enquired of me if I had any plans for another book. I was considering returning to the ‘Jewell’ concept but this time making contact via the internet rather than the postal service; with the development of the world wide web and digital photography, our personal attitudes to portraiture had moved on, the days of Doris Jewell living a long life without a single image of her existence seemed a thing of the past. However, instead I initially ran a Google search of ‘Jewell’ for images, this subsequently also led me to video and audio material baring my surname. The items collated in alphabetical order became Jewell, a Film By Dick Jewell April-August 2010 (133mins), rather than a book it imitates the aspect of multitasking on a computer screen.
My iPhone flower portraits alongside the vitrines, seemed fitting, not only as a traditional subject for wallpaper but in our focus on genealogy when considering the juxtaposition of similar sized subject matter.”
Dick Jewell, 2019.
Location: Bonington Atrium and multiple venues across Nottingham
Uniting 250 artists from 25 countries over 7 days, UK Young Artist (UKYA) City Takeover (Now UK New Artists) will span multiple venues across Nottingham, immersing visitors in an array of extraordinary, innovative and contemporary work, from visual arts to performance; music; applied arts; literature; digital arts and moving image.
One of the largest biennials of national and international artists in the world, UKYA City Takeover will be discerning and cutting-edge. Presenting an exemplar survey show of contemporary art, performance and music being made today. Expect to encounter art and performance in cultural spaces as well as unusual places. From caves to cafes; markets to museums; studios to the streets – the City Takeover weaves a rich tapestry of venues across Nottingham.
Bonington Gallery is delighted to host installations, drawings, sculpture and photography from visual artists: Grace Stones, Jodie Wingham, Lucie Blissett, Luisa Turuani, Nika Kupyrova and Won Hee Nam.
Check out the full programme over on the UKYA City Takeover website.
Location: Lecture Theatre 2, Newton Building, NTU City Campus
Nottingham Trent University is delighted to invite Dick Jewell to speak as part of the 2019 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.
Working across film, photography and photo-collage, Jewell has inhabited both gallery and commercial contexts, exhibiting his work internationally at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Serpentine Gallery (London), as well as producing music videos and promos for musicians including Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack
Growing up in Croydon Jewell spent much of his youth “lugging around an Olympus OM-1 Motor Drive, taking portraits of strangers at any opportunity” going on to publishing his first book Found Photos in 1978, the same year he completed his MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art.
In anticipation of Jewell’s most significant solo show Now & Then (opening January), take a read of this article on his career as an artist/filmmmaker by Dazed & Confused.
Art Dates is a new series of social art gallery-based events hosted by SHEAfriq, a Nottingham-based creative collective of woman creatives of African descent. SHEAfriq aims to provide a relaxed and casual environment for art lovers and non-art lovers alike to interact and engage in fruitful conversation about art, followed by a creative activity over drinks.
For this session of Art Dates, we invite you to join us for the last days of Bonington Gallery’s exhibition The Accumulation of Things (curated by Adam Murray) with Joy Labinjo, one of the exhibiting artists and Saziso Phiri from SHEAfriq. They will discuss the exploration of culture and identity through art, how race and representation came to be key themes in Joy’s work, and her highlights to date as a young award-winning artist. The conversation will be followed by a Q+A and short creative activity over light refreshments.
Joy Labinjo (born 1994) is a painter living and working in Newcastle. Joy’s paintings draw on her British-Nigerian heritage and examine the complex relationship between identity, race and culture. In 2018, Labinjo was awarded with the Woon Foundation Art Prize, considered to be one of most generous prizes in the art world.
Saziso Phiri is a cultural producer and independent curator living and working in Nottingham. In 2015 she founded The Anti Gallery, a pop-up art gallery inspired by urban culture often exhibiting and engaging art in alternative gallery environments. Saziso has been a member of SHEAfriq since 2017.
The Accumulation of Things is an exhibition curated by Adam Murray, bringing together seven artists whose work deals with shared interests of experience, circumstance and the familiar. Personal histories both real and imagined are examined through painting, photography and sculpture.
Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.
For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.
All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.
DISCLAIMER
The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.
Monday 14 May
A selection of film works by Andrew Munks.
Tuesday 15 May
Ashley Holmes, Everybody’s Hustling, 2017
Looped all day.
6.30 pm – 8.30 pm:
The Definition of Grime (To Me),
Lecture by Elijah.
Preceded by a single screening of Ashley Holmes’ Everybody Hustling, 2017. Followed by Q+A hosted by Jonathan P. Watts, visiting Lecturer, BA (Hons) Photography.
Wednesday 16 May
A selection of film works by Sophie Michael.
Thursday 17 May
Richard Paul, All that is Solid, 2018, (13 mins), shown in 3D.
Looped all day.
A 13-minute video by Richard Paul in which a narrator describes an unspecified city, the materials constituting its construction, and the myths connected to these material elements. Close-up images of crystals, stone and metals float gently in space before the viewer, captured using stereographic photography, rendering them in three dimensions, almost touchable. Meanwhile, a dulcet voice describes wheels rolling over iron pyrite streets, how quartz governs a subterranean electronics systems and how concrete is constructed into towers and geometric barriers. The title of the work is taken from The Communist Manifesto, where Marx and Engels proffer all that is solid, melts into air. As a substance is ingested to induce a hallucination or dream state, the cityscape warps, as does the consciousness of the narrator, who dreams of further, more fantastic materials.
Friday 18 May
A selection of film works by Dick Jewell.
Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.
For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.
All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.
DISCLAIMER
The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.
Tuesday 8 May
Emily Richardson, Beach House, 2015 (17 mins).
Looped all day.
Beach House, Shingle St, Suffolk Beach House is a film about a unique example of rural modernism, built on the UK coast of Suffolk by architect John Penn. Penn was an architect, painter, musician and poet whose nine houses in East Suffolk are all built with uncompromising symmetry adhering to the points of the compass in their positioning in the landscape they use a limited language of materials and form that were influenced by his time spent working in California with Richard Neutra. They are Californian modernist pavilions in the Suffolk landscape. Beach House is John Penn’s most uncompromising design in terms of idea as form. The film combines an archive film made by Penn himself on completion of the house with experimental sound recordings made during the same period and material recently filmed in the house to explore a convergence of filmic and architectural language and allow the viewer to piece together Beach House in its past and present forms.
Wednesday 9 May
John Maybury, Read Only Memory, 1998, (92 mins). Courtesy of Lux, London.
Screening times: 10 am, 11.45 am, 1.30 pm, 15.15 pm
Maybury’s significant contribution to experimental film and video becomes apparent through a complex reworking of his own archive footage.
“The film’s attempt to re-create an acid trip is showcased in this creature’s dance: whenever she moves, a rainbow of colors and shapes appear, as if her appendages are the artist’s brushes”.
Gary Morris
Thursday 10 May (late opening)
Reactor, The Gold Ones, 2018, (10 hours).
This special edit of The Gold Ones will run in it’s entirety, 10 am – 8 pm
The project is an evolving narrative, that uses video, performance and installation to explore an imagined future inhabited by characters collectively known as the Gold Ones. When Max Gold’s video transmission first came through in 2014, he named himself ‘one of the Gold Ones’. After tracking Max for a period, filming began in the space known as the Cosmic Care Home (CCH). Initially remaining in what could be described as the outer or back spaces of the CCH, looking through the walls that are at times transparent, or listening in on voices from the other side. This is where the Gold Ones live, and despite their existence on a higher spiritual plane, beyond the limitations of time – the place they inhabit resembles what would be described as a ‘total institution’. They appear to be predominantly cut off from a wider community, and lead an enclosed and bureaucratically controlled existence. What has been seen to date is some semblance of the outer perimeter, or the first entry point into the body of the CCH. It is intended that you will further get to know the Gold Ones through the documentary that is being made here now, and in the future, about who they were and how they exist.
Friday 11 May
A new film work from Friends. More information coming soon.
Saturday 12 May
Various, Nottingham Archive Films, courtesy of Mace Archive.
Looped all day.
Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.
For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.
All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.
DISCLAIMER
The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.
Monday 30 April
Simon Martin, Carlton, 2006, (9 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Looped all day.
The nine minutes of Simon Martin’s compelling, memorable film Carlton (2006) are devoted to a cultural philosophical meditation upon the Carlton cabinet, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1981, and a founding example of the work made by the radical design group Memphis, established in Milan that same year. Outlandish, mischievous, heroically quirky – riding a perilous back-curve between supreme aesthetic poise and assuredly knowing kitsch – Memphis design was as much the articulation of an anti-historicist mission statement as it was a deft-footed style surf on the surging tides of 1980s excess.
Tuesday 1 May
Berwick Street Collective, Night Cleaners, 1975, (90 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Screening times: 10 am, 11.45 am, 1.30 pm, 3.15 pm
Nightcleaners Part 1 was a documentary made by members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin , Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan ), about the campaign to unionize the women who cleaned office blocks at night and who were being victimized and underpaid. Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was forced to turn to new forms in order to represent the forces at work between the cleaners, the Cleaner’s Action Group and the unions – and the complex nature of the campaign itself. The result was an intensely self-reflexive film, which implicated both the filmmakers and the audience in the processes of precarious, invisible labour. It is increasingly recognised as a key work of the 1970s and as an important precursor, in both subject matter and form, to current political art practice.
Wednesday 2 May
Rollo Jackson, Gang Signs & Prayer, 2017.
Looped all day in sequence.
A visual testament to Stormzy’s life and upbringing, the film chronicles Stormzy’s inner battles and temptations as he becomes master of his own destiny. “Return of the Rucksack,” “Bad Boys” and “100 Bags,” taken from Stormzy’s award winning debut studio album “Gang Signs & Prayer,” serve as the soundtrack to the film of the same name.
“Young youts like myself, that grow up in the hood, we often don’t know that we are actually the masters of our own destiny … There are so many things that steer us in the wrong direction however, we decide what happens in our own lives and like my album, I endeavoured for this film to portray just that. Derived from my album Gang Signs & Prayer, and written and directed by the legend that is Rollo, I’ll let the visual do the talking.”
Stormzy
Rollo Jackson, Slimzee’s Going on Terrible, 2014.
Looped all day in sequence.
Slimzee (‘Godfather of Grime’) was the co-founder of Rinse FM and DJ in the UK Garage collective ‘Pay As You Go Cartel’.
Slimzee’s Going on Terrible charts his life, following his early days in pirate radio to receiving a career-threatening Asbo. Features old & new footage and interviews from fellow DJ’s & MC’s and even his own mother.
Thursday 3 May
A series of films by Frank Abbott, 10 am – 5 pm
Looped all day.
[CANCELLED] Frank Abbott, Neither Here Nor There: Displaced over 40 years, 1978-2018, live performance, 6 pm – 7 pm
Displaced over 40 years, Frank Abbott performs a live retrospective of his hand-held projector work.
*** Please note the evening performance has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. ***
Friday 4 May
Mark Leckey, The March of the Big White Barbarians, 2005, (5 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Looped all day.
London’s Public Sculptures are articulated by concrete poetry of Maurice Lemaitre in a free translation by Leckey’s Jack Too Jack.
“After doing the thing with the Epstein [sculpture], I went out actively looking for public sculptures, other monumental sculptures … again, this language feels lost to me … I know what they mean but they seem very distant … they felt neglected, and I wanted to try to sing them back, to reanimate them and make them alive again, because they seemed dead”
Mark Leckey.
Saturday 5 May
Eric Baudelaire, Also Known As Jihadi, 2017, (99 mins). Courtesy of LUX, London.
Screening times: 11 am and 1 pm
Produced in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the film traces the journey and trial of a young man from the suburbs of Paris who travelled via Egypt to Syria to join the Al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda). The subject’s path to radicalism is explored both through judicial transcripts and through a series of landscape shots filmed at the locations traversed by the subject: a biography determined not by what the subject did, but by what the subject saw. In this way, Baudelaire’s film positions itself as both a remake and a test of the landscape theory proposed by Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi in his 1969 masterpiece A.K.A. Serial Killer, questioning how these landscapes reflect the social and political structures that form the backdrop for this journey of alienation and return.
Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.
For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.
All films/performances are played on repeat unless specified otherwise.
DISCLAIMER
The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.
Monday 23 April
Harm van den Dorpel, more information coming soon.
Tuesday 24 April
Jasmine Johnson, L Making Pesto, 2013, (13:37 mins).
Jasmine Johnson, Thieves and Swindlers are not Allowed in Paradise, 2014, (9:20 mins).
Jasmine Johnson, Third Party, 2015, (15:38 mins).
Jasmine Johnson, A Perfect Instrument, 2016, 32:20 mins).
Screening times: 10 am, 11.45 am, 1.30 pm, 15.15 pm
These works are a series of four video portraits by the artist, in which individuals are selected for their proximity to global dilemmas, and for their capacity to articulate human anxieties. This will be the first time they have been presented together.
Wednesday 25 April
John Lawrence, The Solar Pessimist, 2017, (34 mins).
Looped all day.
The Solar Pessimist integrates a 34 minute spoken word monologue performed by actor Peter Hugo Daly (Gangs of New York, Cassandra’s Dream) with a soundtrack by Berlin-based musician Tim Eve (W/ndows, Night Angles) alongside professional lighting techniques including an ‘intelligent’ circular lighting rig and surround sound installation.
It was produced for the vast former industrial space at Spit & Sawdust, Cardiff, as a result of being supported through the Kim Fielding Award 2016—supporting ambitious, experimental approaches to practice across non-traditional gallery sites.
Somewhere between speculative ‘pub chat’ and philosophical diatribe our guiding voice becomes distracted, his thoughts distorted through the joint lenses of conspiracy theory, new-agism and that of the self-righteous contemporary consumer.
Within his meandering thought-processes are propositions about what best to be doing at the end of the world, how zero-gravity pornography will affect us all and…if the sun is a conscious being…what happens when he starts talking back?
For Video Days, Lawrence presents a version of The Solar Pessimist as a single channel video work, the production of which was integrated within the live event itself
Thursday 26 April (late opening)
NG83: WHEN WE WERE B BOYS, 2016, (74 mins). Filmmakers: Claude Knight (Producer & Director), Luke Scott (Writer & Director), Sam Derby-Cooper (Director).
Screening times: 10 am, 11.30 am, 1 pm, 2.30 pm, 4 pm, 5.30 pm, 6.45 pm
In Degrees of Blindness, Evans considers the different possibilities of perceiving the world, our surroundings, and explores different degrees of vision with varying backgrounds and forms of expression.
Saturday 28 April
Karen Cunningham, Movable Type; Under Erasure, 2016, (13:32 mins).
Looped all day.
Movable Type; Under Erasure was commissioned by Legion TV and first shown at The Showroom, London in 2016. Filmed largely on location at Writing-on-Stone, Canada the work features an original monologue written and read by the eminent theorist and cultural critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.