Opening up a space for the ear and the voice, Ear to Ear offered an invitation to its audience to become immersed in sonic space. It challenged the dominance of the visual in both the world of contemporary art and the modern day art and design school.
This exhibition featured immersive sound works by Robert Squirrell and Thomas Hall as well as a collection of playbacks and screenings curated by Rob Flint, on behalf of the Listening Group*.
Hypnotic and enchanting Sirens is an immersive aural and visual experience, resonating the allure and seductiveness of the mythical sea deities. Enticed into the installation by an ever changing musical arrangement of voices the viewer is surrounded by imposing sculptural forms, evoking impressions of being trapped in the hull of a boat or caught in the clutches of a pair of hands. Each experience is unique to the individual viewer.
An interactive sound installation in the form of a spiral maze exploring ideas related to the Large Hadron Collider – CERN, particle physics, circularity and what it might sound like. Curious about our understanding of the universe, the work sonically explores a physical experience of play in an immersive surround sound environment.
Thomas Hall and Robert Squirrell are both members of Engagement Party, an artist led group working individually and collectively with notions of active engagement, interaction and play.
*Listening Group is an informal meeting of students and staff. It is intended to be a place for focusing attention to art-works that foreground sound and active listening.
This exhibition brought together two artists that investigate their own subjectivity in relation to socio-political economies and corporeal boundaries. Through differing approaches each artist created a shared language through mired and inky surfaces on skin and paper. By exhibiting solo works together Kelly and Marhaug grappled to hold each other in view and create the context to embark on a collaborative project, whilst Kelly was in residency at USF Verftet, Bergen (April-June 2013).
The Seers-in Residence was a programme which engaged four researchers from Nottingham Trent University, drawn from across various departments and schools. The researchers were invited to interact with Traci Kelly’s mono print installation Feeling It For You (Perspective) to evoke their own practice and research interests.
Emma Cocker, School of Art & Design
Thursday 10 January, 10 am – 1 pm
Emma Cocker’s practice interrogates the critical potential of failure, uncertainty, boredom, hesitation, immobility and inconsistency by exploring models of practice and subjectivity that remain wilfully open or unresolved.
Joanne Lee, School of Art & Design
Thursday 17 January, 10 am – 1 pm
Joanne Lee investigates the aesthetics of everyday urban life and explores the possibilities of the essay in textual and visual forms as a creative and critical entity.
Ben Judd, School of Art & Design
Wednesday 23 January, 2 pm – 5 pm
Ben Judd interacts with and creates alternative belief systems based on observations of social groups such as witches and Morris dancers, to which he remains paradoxically both close and distant, connected and disconnected.
Dr Simon Cross, School of Arts and Humanities
Thursday 31 January 10 am – 1 pm
Simon Cross’ research engages with the representation and attending imagery of madness in the social sphere through historical and contemporary trajectories.
Our first exhibition of 2018 is a solo presentation of new work by London-based and Nottingham-originated artist Ruth Angel Edwards. This follows her contribution to our 2016 group exhibition Terraformers, curated by Landfill Editions.
A new commission for Bonington Gallery, this immersive installation considers the inescapable cycles of waste and decay, a by-product of all our consumption, personal or material.
The exhibition explores how these ecologies overlap at different scales – from the futile pursuit of personal purification and ‘clean living’, to the increasingly rapid turnover of cultural ‘content’ in the media and popular consciousness, to the wider perspective of the waste which is polluting our oceans, and threatening our very existence.
Edwards studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Recent exhibitions and projects include Enema Salvatore! , Almanac, Turin, 2017; Light Deception / The Great Imitator, Auto Italia South East, London, 2017; a solo exhibition at Arcadia Missa, London, 2016; Info Pura, The Residence Gallery, London 2016, Derivatives and Futures, Human Resources, Los Angeles, 2016; A British Art Show, MEYOHAS, New York, 2015.
Associated Events
Thursday 25 January, 5.15 pm – 7.30 pm: Fine Art Live Lecture Present: Ruth Angel Edwards
Lecture Theatre 2, Newton building, NTU City Campus
Saturday 3 February, 1 pm – 2 pm (postponed) Ruth Angel Edwards: premier of new video work
Bonington Gallery
Bonington Gallery was delighted to present Publishing Rooms, a commissioned exhibition concept by Andrew and Iain Foxall of Foxall Studio, London.
Over the past decade, mass-publishing has moved from the print houses into the hands of anyone owning a smartphone. Publishing is no longer a privilege, but an involuntary expression of our multiple identities and allegiances.
Exploring themes of self-expression and posterity, Bonington Gallery became a facility for self-publishing.
Set within a constructed environment that combines the appearance of an abstracted newsroom with the functionality of a photo booth, visitors were invited to interact with technological and analogue devices designed and implemented by Foxall. These tools for self-publishing will provide opportunity to further explore our obsessions with mediated forms of self-expression.
Referencing and subverting everything from zine culture to the selfie phenomenon, Publishing Rooms provided opportunities to go beyond the prescribed presets found in our social media outlets, generating new variables for the production of self-imagery and the subjective understanding of ourselves.
Referencing and subverting everything from zine culture to the selfie phenomenon, Publishing Rooms provided opportunities to go beyond the prescribed presets found in our social media outlets, generating new variables for the production of self-imagery and the subjective understanding of ourselves.
Brothers Andrew and Iain started Foxall Studio in 2006 to combine their experience and vision in art, fashion and innovation. As a multi-disciplinary studio, Foxall direct brand-led experiences ranging from brand creation, art direction and magazine design, through to exhibition design.
The brothers work with designers, developers, photographers and artists to create collaborations that challenge the paradigms of brand / experience building. Recent projects include a commissioned brand campaign by British jewellery designer, Jo Hayes Ward; contributions to an installation for Selfridges, London; and a music film released exclusively on Nowness.
Andrew and Iain also regularly lecture and run workshops at The British Council, London College of Communication, The Royal College of Art and Liverpool John Moores.
All the images created within Publishing Rooms were published directly to publishingrooms.com. Here, you can view and save your scanner camera portraits, and view the most recent images made using the Body Scan and Wall Scanner installations. From there, you can also share these elsewhere on the web, with the ability to share them directly to social media platforms. Tag your posts #PublishingRooms on Instagram and Twitter and share your exhibition experience with us.
Our Gallery invigilators and Foxall Studios’ intern Marion will also be kept us up-to-date with the exhibition via the blog. In case you missed it, you can read Andrew and Iain’s introduction to the project and get an early look at the scanner camera development here.
An informal discussion looking at the changing importance of printed matter and whether it still holds up as a relevant and vital contemporary media format. This will take place on 26th April, 1 pm, in the gallery space.
Guest Speakers:
Matt Gill (Raw Print), Andrew Foxall (Foxall Studio), Iain Foxall (Foxall Studio), Hugh Frost (Landfill Editions), Alex Smith (Ideas on Paper), chaired by Tom Godfrey
This exhibition was open as part of the Nottingham Art Weekender on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May 2016, where many of the venues listed on the Nottingham Art Map invited the public to take part in their events and exhibitions in a celebration of the visual arts scene in Nottingham.
In response to our exhibition Andrew Logan: The Joy of Sculpture, NTU Students on the Typography Optional Module created a typeface and re-imagined our exhibition booklet and invite. The students had half a day on each exercise and came up with some fantastic responses!
We are excited to share a selection of them below:
Use the links below to have a look at their leaflets:
The Accumulation of Things brings 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.
Aditya Babbar’s photographs capture the complexities of interpersonal relationships by the creation of meticulously directed portraits. His compositions are littered with evidence, from the decor to the posture of the subjects, all the while suggesting at a possible narrative beyond the picture.
Stories, or snippets of stories are told through the language of painting and drawing by Joe Bloom. He invites the viewer to use elements presented before them, together with their own interpretation and experiences, to make decisions on the connotations of the composition.
Photographer Julie Greve’s work takes the form of portraits and staged visual scenarios made in collaboration with groups of girls. Born and raised in a small town in Denmark, a lot of Julie’s work focuses on the areas in which she grew up.
Alicia Jalloul’s sculptures address the paradoxes that exist with the crossing between cultures, whilst Joy Labinjo draws on her British-Nigerian heritage, inviting the viewer to step into preliminary drawings saturated with colours, patterns and people, reconfigured from her family photograph albums.
Evie O’Connor explores class and identify in her works, and her textiles background has heavily informed the stylistic and decorative qualities within her work. She imagines both a beautiful and droll environment, explored through familiar domestic environments. Max Prus produces figurative drawings and paintings, telling stories with complex narratives representing culture and society.
Exhibition curated by Adam Murray. Adam is a lecturer, photographer and curator based in Manchester. He is co-founder of photography collective Preston is my Paris, and most recently he co-curated North: Fashioning Identity with Lou Stoppard at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and Somerset House, London.
Special thanks goes to John A Stephens Ltd. for supplying materials for this exhibition.
We are very excited about launching our 2021/22 season with a solo exhibition spanning 50 years of work by Andrew Logan, one of Britain’s most iconic artists.
We’ll be opening our doors for a preview of this incredible exhibition on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 September 2021, 12 – 6 pm daily. Everyone is welcome – just reserve your free place online and drop in:
Reserve your free place for The Joy of Sculpture preview on Saturday 25 September
Reserve your free place for The Joy of Sculpture preview on Sunday 26 September
Due to the current lockdown restrictions, the Reactor exhibition will be in residence at Bonington Gallery from 7 April – 29 May 2021. This will be punctuated by live events streamed from the gallery. The exhibition will open to the public from 17 May 2021.
[COSMIC SOUP – RECORDED MESSAGE STARTS AGAIN]
Can you hear me?
Yes we can hear you quite clearly now.
It’s good to speak with you again.
What is it like there?
Here, there are endlessly repeating cosmic planes.
Visions of the past and future are accessible.
That’s how we remember it anyway.
So, we’re projecting now.
You’ll need to read between the lines.
Piece together the glimpses. The pieces.
You’re about to arrive.
[INTERFERENCE – LINE CUTS OFF – IMMENSE, BUBBLING, COLOURFUL PATTERNS]
The Gold Ones have existed across time, and now reside in the Cosmic Care Home (CCH). On this particular cosmic plane they are cut off from a wider community, and lead a bureaucratically controlled existence, cared for by elusive Helping Hands. What can be seen here, is an increasingly incessant transmission from within the Home. As the Gold Ones move through cycles of activity – rest, care, affirmation, breakfast, exercise, games, and treatment – we get to know each of them, their relations and woo-woo beliefs.
This performance-fiction is an evolving narrative, using video, performance, games and installation to explore an imagined present-future-past inhabited by characters collectively known as the Gold Ones. When Max Gold’s first video broadcast came through, he designated himself as ‘one of the Gold Ones’. An undetermined cohort of higher spiritual beings, or so they claim. After tracking Max for a period, we began to watch them intensely, to uncover them one by one. Initially remaining in the back spaces of the CCH, looking through the transparent walls, or listening in on voices from the other side. Here now, if and when we’re ready, you can join the Gold Ones in the main gathering room.
Saturday 1 May, 5 pm – 8 pm
Remote viewing provides access to the Gold Ones’ Dummies.
What can be seen here is an increasingly incessant transmission from within the Cosmic Care Home. As the Gold Ones move through cycles of activity – rest, care, affirmation, exercise, games, and treatment – we get to know each of them, their relations and woo-woo beliefs.
This event is part of the residency and new video-installation by the art collective Reactor currently on show at Bonington Gallery, which documents the lives of a cohort of higher spiritual beings known as The Gold Ones.
Thursday 13 May, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
A live performance roll-thru of the Ivan Poe video game, as this cuboid character keeps truckin’ on through the Cosmic Soup.
The Ivan Poe game has been developed in collaboration by Reactor, Bruce Asbestos and Jez Noond. For this event they will be joined by Kitty Clark, Mark Jackson and Jamie Sutcliffe to discuss video games, performance streaming and the myriad overlaps.
This event is part of the residency and new video-installation by the art collective Reactor currently on show at Bonington Gallery, which documents the lives of a cohort of higher spiritual beings known as The Gold Ones.
Monday 10 May, 5pm – Saturday 29 May, 3pm
What’s happening in the Cosmic Care Home today? Tune into the CCH 24hr TV transmission. Scrolling through the numerous cameras in the Home, the Helping Hands choose what you can see, around the clock. These cycles of slow-rest, care, break-fast, and well … what you can see now, is that time for the Gold Ones travels differently.
Thursday 15 July, 7pm – 8.30pm
Reactor and Plastique Fantastique have been talking about producing a performance fiction for some time.
We/they (Reactor/Plastique Fantastique) said that there would be a get-together to discuss this performance friction at some point in the future.
We (Reactor) called them and said now might be the time.
They (Plastique Fantastique) agreed and said: one hot summer long ago – 21 June 1998 – after travelling back to a pleasure park and forecasting what would later be said to have been called forth (our, Reactor’s, performance fiction), they (Plastique Fantastique) had created a set of protocols (a recording) for our (Reactor’s) performance.
They (Plastique Fantastique) claim an enunciation, or a type of performance diction/dictation was cast, for us (Reactor) to follow – an enunciation derived from tarot reading and looping sessions.
We (Reactor) listened in at the other end of the line, but wouldn’t quite hear correctly, and so the performance prediction didn’t happen (they, Plastique Fantastique, said it did and it was followed by us, Reactor, precisely).
So, we/they (Reactor/Plastique Fantastique) thought best to make that known beforehand. Are you (you) OK with that? You (you) are OK with that, so thanks for your attendance.
Reactor is an art collective, comprising Susie Henderson, Niki Russell and an undisclosed number of secret members. Recent and forthcoming projects include: ‘Ivan Poe’ (online), Kunstraum (London), Southwark Park Galleries (London), Quad (Derby) and Hexham Arts Centre, ‘The Gold Ones’, Radar (Loughborough), Plymouth Art Weekender, Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Gallery North (Newcastle) and xero, kline & coma (London), ‘Log!c ?stem’, Flux Factory (New York), ‘Dummy Button’, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin).
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, we are currently adapting this exhibition to a new format and will release more information soon. Please check back soon for updates.
The exhibition will continue to be an open call, with new submission requirements to be confirmed.
Bonington Gallery is pleased to be presenting The Captive Conscious, a collection of visual responses to an open call led by our Student Curatorial Group. Creative practitioners from within Nottingham Trent University and beyond are invited to respond in any medium to a piece of writing composed of redacted appropriated texts. The text has been cut, merged, edited and reassembled to form a new piece of writing that can be opened up to interpretation – in response to an imaginary narrative. The Captive Conscious will present an observation of the minds of many, encouraging a truly organic response to language.
Sensing Systems is now available to stream online. For the remaining Sensing Systems exhibition dates (until Saturday 28 March), Matt Woodham has re-situated all of the moving image works from his exhibition onto the streaming platform Twitch – allowing for full interactivity. After a quick registration and scan of the instructions, you can type in commands and values via the ‘stream chat’ to adjust the visual effects within the works.
Note: Depending on streaming speeds, there can be a four to five second delay.
Matt Woodham’s debut solo exhibition Sensing Systems will fill the gallery with a composition of connected installations, positioning visitors within a system of light, sound and motion. Visual and kinetic events will be sequenced by a central processing unit which distributes signals around the room. You can interact with the system, which, alongside random data sources and a sensitivity to initial conditions, creates a unique experience for each viewer.
“… It’s all live and being generated in real time… you can control it and you can influence it.”
Artist Matt Woodham speaks about his exhibition, Sensing Systems.
Alongside the exhibition, a number of offsite events have been developed:
Video courtesy of Matt Woodham and Reece Straw.
Matt Woodham is an artist, designer and technologist whose practice evades disciplinary definition. After specialising in visual neuroscience during his degree, he channelled his skills and interests into generating auditory and visual experiences – including music videos, live visuals for club nights, light installations, and experimental websites.
In recent years, Woodham’s research into the complex systems of the brain has evolved into a broader interdisciplinary practice. Inspired by the emergent, irreducible states of perception, he utilises experimental techniques such as feedback loops, generative algorithms and randomness. He employs code and electronic circuits to exploit the liminal space between order and disorder. These processes reflect the common non-linear dynamics which are shared between systems of various scales – from quantum mechanics to the economy. He feels that harnessing nature’s mechanisms has the power to delight an audience.
