• About
• Exhibitions and Events
• Archive
• News
• Visit Us

Toggle search

We were really pleased to be featured in the Observer Sunday 17th September, as part of an article looking at John Beck and Matthew Cornford’s art school project. You can read the full article here.

The School For Lovers was an exhibition by Sharon Kivland, which took place in November 1998.

The title of the new photographic installations by Sharon Kivland is taken from Mozart’s opera, Cosi fan Tutte. The work is based around the structure of the opera; its arrangement echoes its staging and characterisation. The opera is a work of masquerades and doublings, of couplings which are uncoupled under direction of a libertine, Don Alfonso, sets out to prove to his young friends, Gugliemo and Ferando, that all women are unfaithful and, more than that, anyone can come to fill the place of the Other if the conditions are right; in effect, that desire is essentially the desire of the Other’s desire. Through her work she creates a space of highly formulised attention, an event within which the viewer is drawn like a detective, both intellectually and through desire into pleasure of the gaze.

The archive cabinet contains a recreation of the exhibition plan, images of Kivland’s previous shows, images used in the show, and some of Kivland’s publications. There are also postcards from the artist, to the then Gallery Manager, Stella Cauloutbanis.

Curated by Alex Jovčić-Sas

An exhibiton of women’s artwork being produced now, and influenced by Feminism in the 1980’s. Exhibiton selected by Sutapa Biswas, Sarah Edge and Claire Slattery. This show toured from Cooper Gallery, Barnsley. Part of Anne Frank in the World Programme.

Curated by Joshua Lockwood-Moran

Please note this is a rescheduled event that is now streaming online only.

Coinciding with The Art Schools of the East Midlands exhibition, join us for a free event that explores the role of British art schools in shaping fashion, music and club culture over the last 40-50 years.

We will be joined by esteemed writer and curator Paul Gorman, who will discuss his work’s engagement with the significant role played by art schools, their educators and attendees in the broader culture.

Join us as we explore this past and consider it against the wider influence of the notion of the ‘art school’ on other forms of cultural and creative production.

Photo of Paul Gorman by Toby Amies.

HINTERLAND: i) Often uncharted district behind coast or river banks. 
Land adjacent to water. ii) Area surrounding city a region, including communities and rural areas, that surrounds a city and depends on it.

Hinterland is a project curated by Jennie Syson comprising a series of offsite works situated along the banks of the River Trent in Nottingham.  Different work will manifest alongside water throughout one year, with the first sightings being visible in time for Autumn 2006.

A ‘Hinterland’ evokes thoughts of boundaries or edges. The project is set to develop and grow in stages, happening just on the periphery of the city. By taking the theme of a hinterland as a motif, the identified site presents a viewpoint for revelation or concealment across the panorama of the whole of Nottingham.

The River Trent has 30 tributaries. 30 separate elements in the project will represent the different streams feeding into a larger body of water. As well as being a metaphor for naturally occurring streams, each artist’s individual project will ‘pay tribute’ to the geographical location. Hinterland will draw a contour around the southern edge of the city by following a section of the river, a channel about ½ a mile either side of Trent Bridge.

Bristol-based artist Mariele Neudecker tackles the highly emotive and challenging theme of grief for children in an evocative film installation created in response to Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). The commission is the latest in a series of innovative works by Neudecker in which she explores classical music and poetry through film and sculpture.

Bristol-based artist Mariele Neudecker tackles the highly emotive and challenging theme of grief for children in an evocative film installation created in response to Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). The commission is the latest in a series of innovative works by Neudecker in which she explores classical music and poetry through film and sculpture.

Bristol-based artist Mariele Neudecker tackles the highly emotive and challenging theme of grief for children in an evocative film installation created in response to Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). The commission is the latest in a series of innovative works by Neudecker in which she explores classical music and poetry through film and sculpture.

Bristol-based artist Mariele Neudecker tackles the highly emotive and challenging theme of grief for children in an evocative film installation created in response to Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). The commission is the latest in a series of innovative works by Neudecker in which she explores classical music and poetry through film and sculpture.

“Neudecker’s work sensitively explores a highly emotive subject matter. We are delighted that through this commission, she has taken her work in a new direction, combining sculptural form with film and classical music.”

Josephine Lanyon, Director, Picture This

“This installation continues some of our previous explorations of film and music at the venue. Colston Hall provides an unusual but highly appropriate setting for this work, and brings new audiences to both the visual arts and classical music.”

Graeme Howell, Director, Colston Hall

Commissioned by Opera North Projects and Picture This in partnership with Impressions Gallery, Bradford and Colston Hall (now Bristol Beacon), Bristol.

Future Factory, based within Nottingham Trent University, is delighted to present Town and Country, featuring work by Southwell Artspace artists: Georgina Bell, Geoff Litherland, Stuart Parkinson, Stephanie Richards and David Uden. The exhibition, which takes place in Bonington Foyer, runs from 23 February until 10 March.

This exhibition provides a rare opportunity to view the wide range of work from some of the resident artists at Southwell Artspace – which offers a focus for the contemporary visual arts in a rural setting, allowing the audience to reflect upon the importance of the artists’ working space, and the impact this has upon the work.  

Featured work includes: textiles by Georgina Bell; drawings by Stuart Parkinson; silk-screen prints by David Uden; and paintings by both Stephanie Richards and Geoff Litherland.

We are delighted to welcome Birmingham based artist-educator Shannon Thomson for a ‘micro-residency’ during John Beck and Matthew Cornford’s exhibition, The Art Schools of the East Midlands. Shannon will explore Nottingham School of Art & Design’s architectural, social and cultural history through the process of personal and collective collage making.

For two days, Shannon will be working within the gallery, cutting and splicing source material from our archive with photography and ephemera gathered by the artist herself.

Visitors to the gallery will be welcome to join in with the activity and create their own collages, contributing to a collective dialogue about the subject of art school pasts, presents and futures.

Shannon will return to the gallery on Saturday 25th November, 10 am – 1 pm for a session with our Saturday Art Club group. Visitors to the gallery that day will be able to observe this activity taking place inside the gallery.

Launch event: Friday 15 March, 6–8 pm. Book free tickets

Don’t miss the first UK exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Osheen Siva, entitled ‘Karuppu’ (கருப்பு – meaning darkness/black in Tamil). The exhibition includes drawings and paintings, collaborative tapestries crafted with local woman artisans, and the incorporation of leather, laden with political and caste contexts in India.

Originally from Thiruvannamalai in South India, and currently based in Goa, Siva is an acclaimed artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, performance and public art. As a digital illustrator they have collaborated with leading global brands including Apple, Gucci, and Meta.

Taking a cue from Afrofuturism, Siva’s work brings together science fiction, mythology, heritage, their love of comic books, and the vibrant, joyful colours of South India to create fantastical characters and dreamscapes, reclaiming and reinventing Indian folktales and myths to imagine a decolonised future.

Siva’s work is rooted in their Dalit and Tamil heritage. Dalit translates as ‘broken, divided, split, shattered’ and Dalits are among India’s most marginalised citizens, condemned to the lowest echelons of society by a rigid caste hierarchy. Karuppu – meaning darkness or black in Tamil – carries associations with ‘evil’ in Hindu mythology and is often used in reference to the lower caste and the ‘untouchables’. Siva navigates the complexities of Dalit history, offering a powerful and evocative exploration of identity, resistance, and the quest for a liberated future.

A self-taught illustrator and muralist from Thiruvannamalai, India, Osheen Siva imagines a brave new world of decolonized dreamscapes and narratives of queer power

– BlackStar

Siva’s Dalit Futurism reclaims the word Karuppu, seeking to invert and transform the arbitrary structure of caste through a narrative of mutation and hybridity. The beautiful mutant characters serve as a metaphor, challenging assigned social status and established histories with non-binary fluidity, championing bodily autonomy, and highlighting queer and feminine power.

Central to the exhibition is the reclamation and reinvention of Indian mythologies. Siva’s work critiques Hindu scriptures and ancient Sanskrit texts that perpetuate the discrimination of lower-caste individuals. Deliberately countering the lack of positive imagery associated with Dalit communities, Siva creates progressive depictions, envisioning a future that transcends existing stereotypes.

Exploring their heritage in the farming communities of Tamil Nadu, nature is a recurring motif in Siva’s work. Acting as a dual symbol, the natural world conveys fruitfulness and abundance and also highlights the trauma associated with labour and bondage, creating a complex dialogue between nature and social hierarchy.

Images by Osheen Siva, 2024.

Artist website: https://osheensiva.com/
It’s Nice That: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/osheen-siva-illustration-140721
Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/810814/coasting-the-topography-of-south-asian-futurisms/

With audio description and creative captions

history is a living weapon in yr hand is a solo exhibition of new and reconfigured work by London-based artist Onyeka Igwe.

The exhibition will be centred around a new two-screen adaptation of Igwe’s dual timeline experimental film A Radical Duet (2023). The film imagines what happened when two women of different generations, but both part of the post-war independence movement, came together in London to put their fervour and imagination into writing a revolutionary play. The film depicts this process, and envisages what that play would look like, if staged today.

1947 London was a hub of radical anti-colonial activity. International intellectuals, artists, and activists like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Sylvia Wynter, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, and George Padmore were all in London at the eve of the end of British colonialism. Individually, they were agitating for their respective countries’ national independence, but did they meet? And if they all did, what did they discuss? What did they conjure?

The film will be accompanied by elements of the set design and props from the making of A Radical Duet, taking inspiration from Sylvia Wynter’s ideas on theatrical adaptation. Wynter builds on Brechtian principles of modern epic theatre and advises on how set design can support a theatre to ‘explode [social] fears by bringing them out into the light of day’.

For this exhibition, Igwe will be working with Collective Text, an organisation supporting accessibility in art and film through creative captioning, audio description and interpretation.

A Radical Duet was commissioned by FLAMIN Productions through FILM LONDON Artists’ Moving Image Network with funding from Arts Council England.

history is a living weapon in yr hand is produced in collaboration with Peer Gallery, London, where it will be presented in autumn 2024.

Photographs by Jules Lister