In July 2015 a group of BArch (Hons) Architecture students from Nottingham Trent University (NTU) participated in a research project, which involved the documentation of invisible memory points in Nottingham.
As part of their research the students visited the National Memorial Arboretum (NMA), a key location for national remembrance in the UK. Most of the images included in this show are a direct response to the commemorative architecture: a visual and textual reaction to the experience of visiting the NMA and other memory points in the UK.
NTU students, David Symons, Emma Hewitt and Rumbi Mukundi worked with three students from Brazil – Marina Martinelli, Felipe Bomfim and Alina Peres – to create a website with an interactive map and blog, as well as a printed tourist map. The idea of the site was to increase awareness of the architecture of memory in Nottingham and beyond.
Visit the website to view the student project.
The group have also printed out a selection of quotes which refer to photography and the visual representation of memory, as well as the experience of architecture.
When visiting the exhibition we invite you to respond to these images and quotes by writing directly onto the wall in order to contribute to the work in progress. Tell us how the image or text makes you feel – do you agree with what they represent?
Responses are invited in any format – it’s up to you.
The project was led by Dr. Ana Souto, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and supported by Prof. Duncan Higgins, Professor of Visual Arts at NTU.
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.
Emily Andersen is a London-based artist and senior lecturer in photography at Nottingham Trent University. Her work has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally for over 25 years.
We’re delighted to host London-based artist Emily Andersen’s latest solo exhibition and accompanying book launch of Portraits: Black & White published by Anomie Publishing in October 2018.
Andersen has built up a remarkable portfolio of photographic work including many high-profile artists, musicians, writers, poets, film directors, actors and architects, with Peter Blake, Derek Jarman, Zaha Hadid, Arthur Miller, Helen Mirren, Michael Nyman and Eduardo Paolozzi among those featured in this publication of black-and-white portraits.
The book features an essay by contemporary art critic Jonathan P. Watts, exploring the lives of some of Andersen’s many sitters, and discusses her practice within the wider critical debates of photography since the late 1980s.
The Portraits: Black & White book launch and Emily Andersen’s solo exhibition preview will take place on Thursday 1 November from 5 pm to 7 pm.
Email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk to reserve your free place at this event.
Emily Andersen graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1983. Her work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide including The Photographers’ Gallery, London; The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; and China Arts Museum, Shanghai. Her portraits are in the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery, London, and in other public collections including The British Library, London, and The Contemporary Art Society, London. She has won awards including the John Kobal prize for portraiture.
Listen and you’ll see: Work by Peter Wright, 2015
Images dominate. Visual representation has a power which goes largely unchallenged in contemporary culture. The ability to pause time and repeat the moment for eternity is a strength of the photographic image which raises the visual above all other senses when we attempt to represent the world around us.
‘Listen and you’ll see’ is an attempt to add another sense to the equation. By recording a minute of sound at the same time as capturing the fraction of a visual second, Peter hopes to draw attention to what is ordinarily missing from our re-presentation of the world and our memories of it. Through repetition of the sound loop we can hear the rhythms of these scenes as well as see them.
This little experiment also presents an opportunity to go back-to-basics in our appreciation of the still photographic image and re-engage with the elements which made it so powerful in the first place.