A group of visual artists from Korea are to exhibit a range of striking work at Nottingham Trent University as part of an exciting cultural exchange initiative. The artists – who specialise in painting, sculpture, design, craft and photography – are leading academics from the Chung Ang University in Seoul, and will show their work during the Scales of the Dragon exhibition from October 22 to November 21.
Work by 26 academics will be on show at the exhibition, which takes its name from the various units of art on display and the Chung Ang University symbol animal.
Among them will be painter Lee Jong-gu, a Korean Artist of the Year 2006, who for the last 20 years has focused on the struggle of Korean rural life. His work depicts both the anger and the hope that Korean farmers harbour with a sense of realism as the country’s agricultural communities collapse due to struggles with industrialism, urbanisation, and globalisation.
Ryu Ho-yeol looks at the idea of falling into daydreams in our daily lives and how they present us with a moment of relaxation – allowing us to escape from reality into a world of imagination. He uses a variety of media technology to achieve this; one of his pieces on show, a three dimensional artwork called Laufen 2007, was computer-generated and depicts a runner in continual motion.
Influenced by early 1970s modernism, An Byeong-seok uses steel brush strokes to carry the image of a grass field wavering in the wind; his affluent colours bring to mind a summer field of barley or an autumn field steeped in the setting sun. An Byeong-seok has entered national and international exhibitions such as the Cagnes International Festival of Painting (France) the Asian Art Exhibition (Japan) and Art Chicago 2000 (US).
The exhibition is part of a unique collaboration between the two institutions which has already seen fine art staff from the university’s School of Art and Design travel to Chung Ang to exhibit their work and run master classes for the Korean students. Chung Ang students also come to Nottingham Trent University for a year-long exchange, while Nottingham students take part in an art summer school in Seoul each year.
Professor Simon Lewis, the university’s Head of College of Art and Design and Built Environment, has given several lecturers at Chung Ang as part of the relationship, which was forged when Chung Ang graduate Dr Seong Hee Kim came to Nottingham Trent University to study an art and science-related PhD. Dr Seong Hee Kim is now a project co-ordinator for the university’s Centre for Effective Learning in Science.
“This exhibition is a great opportunity for people to see firsthand the work of some of Korea’s most exciting artists,” said Professor Lewis.
He said: “Nottingham Trent University’s School of Art and Design prides itself on its international partnerships and this particular collaboration enables the promotion of joint research as well as unique exchange opportunities. We’re really looking forward to the exhibition which promises to give staff, students and visitors an excellent insight into Korean art and culture.”
Before the exhibition begins, art historian Professor Kim Young-ho from Chung Ang University will give a lecture on Visual Art Today in Korea.
‘Fictions’ brings together the work of eight contemporary artists who explore the boundaries between fact and fiction. Taking its name from the collection of short stories by Argentinean writer Jorge Louis Borges, the exhibition draws on the paradoxical scenarios he creates.
In Borges’ world, ideas of language, time, memory and truth surpass our everyday expectations. As an exhibition, ‘Fictions’ aims to sketch out these relationships within the context of our contemporary society.
This exhibition is curated by High Dichmont and Fay Nicholson, who will be exhibiting work alongside fellow artists Eugenia Ivanissevich, Glen Jamieson, Aaron Juneau, Girolamo Marri, Helen Perkins and Marianna Simnett.
The private view for this exhibition will take place in the Bonington Gallery on Thursday 19th March between 6-8pm. All are welcome to attend.
A major car crash has occurred in the gallery – a head on collision. Skid marks are emblazoned across the floor, there is wreckage everywhere and blood is splattered up the walls – glistening and fresh. You are being filmed by surveillance cameras, are you the victim or perpetrator? Sections of the gallery seem inaccessible, areas cordoned off by hazard tape… is it a major disaster, a crime scene or spoof horror film?
Craig Fisher’s exhibition, CAT-AS-TROPHE consists of a large-scale sculptural installation. Fisher’s sculpture, It’s Uncanny 2008 (two replica mini cooper cars) are constructed from carefully selected fabrics which are seductive in nature and ask the viewer to question the representation of violence laid out before them. Fisher makes work that situates itself in a world of contradictions. He plays with our perception, challenging us to consider notions of art and craft. He references both high and low culture and juxtaposes the pictorial with the sculptural, creating potential spaces of slippage which act as a challenge to our habits of looking.
The theatricality of Fisher’s installations allow the viewer to engage in a narrative interplay and his work often makes reference to ideas of filmic or cartoon violence. A sense of saturation and the anodyne is at play in Fisher’s work. It is easy to miss the horror through the materiality of the artwork. The strange familiarity of crafted objects, and the voyeuristic quality of such imagery is highlighted by the craftsmanship of the detailing, sewing and pattern-cutting. By contrasting fabric and craft with these images, the artist subverts the significance of masculinity and challenges notions of representation.
Funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Katja Hock is a practising artist and a senior lecturer in Photography in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. Her latest exhibition will present a slide installation, Stillness and Silence that has been developed over the last three years. The work addresses the importance of historical memory to our present perception of our cultural and social context.
As part of this exhibition Katja Hock will be in conversation with Susan Trangmar, Reader in Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Located in the Bonington Gallery, this event is open the general public and admission is free.
During the summer of 2008, ten disabled actors from Teesside University were asked to explore their own day-to-day movements: dancing, cycling, cleaning, walking, running and eating. The resulting work, Motion Disabled, uses motion capture and 3D animation to create a kinetic connection with the human form – beautiful everyday, virtual movements highlighting all the intricacies and uniqueness of each person’s physicality.
Nottingham Trent University is proud to present this exciting installation by Simon McKeown, which enables the viewer to engage and explore ideas of normality and difference.
15 Years of Philip Watts Design – A retrospective presents of one of the UK’s leading creative design companies. NTU graduate Philip has designed an extensive and diverse range of award-winning products since the conception of Philip Watts Design, and this exhibition will show some of the most memorable: candle holders, mooing cow salt and pepper pots, giant melting staircases, radiators, door handles, lights and urinals.
Philip Watts Design has exhibited in over 20 countries, spanning four continents, and this will be the first time all this work will be seen together as a complete history of creative output.
Emily Andersen
Somewhere Else Entirely
25 March – 13 May 2023
Exhibition preview: Friday 24 March, 6-8 pm
“When I’m not writing poetry everything is okay, life’s fine, but it is not entire. Something is missing.” – Ruth Fainlight
This spring Bonington Gallery presents Somewhere Else Entirely a new three-screen video installation by the acclaimed photographer Emily Andersen featuring the American-born poet and writer Ruth Fainlight, who has become one of Britain’s most distinguished poets.
Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City in 1931 and moved to England when she was 15. During a lifetime dedicated to writing she has produced numerous collections of poetry, short stories, and translations. In 1959 she married the writer, Alan Sillitoe, and her many literary friendships included Sylvia Plath, Jane and Paul Bowles, and Robert Graves.
Andersen’s work is an intimate portrait of Fainlight, now aged 91, presenting fragments of the poet’s life. Taking inspiration from Renaissance triptychs and their depiction of different elements of the same subject across three panels, Somewhere Else Entirely captures Fainlight at her home in London, making notes, on her walks, and in the seaside town of Brighton where she spent her teenage years. Each image is carefully framed with a photographer’s eye for composition and detail – Fainlight walking along the corridor, her green cardigan against green foliage, the booklined walls – and intentionally moves at a gentle pace, sometimes almost appearing to be a series of still images.
In Somewhere Else Entirely Fainlight talks off-screen, revealing fascinating insights into her life, her creative process, and how she is ‘in the hands of the poem’. Her intensely visual poetry and fiction touch on themes of time, memory, and loss – and in her voiceover, she movingly recites her poem ‘Somewhere Else Entirely’ composed after the death of her husband.
Andersen has been a photographer for four decades. Her work includes interiors, architecture, and landscape but she is best known for her award-winning portraiture, capturing well-known faces including Nico, Peter Blake, and Helen Mirren. Somewhere Else Entirely is Andersen’s first completed video portrait and is inspired by her decade-long friendship with Fainlight. The exhibition also shares its title with Fainlight’s 2018 poetry collection which features Andersen’s photographs on the cover.
The 11 minute long, three-channel video, will be shown on a 10.5m wide curved screen within the gallery space. To accompany the exhibition there will be an in-conversation with Emily Andersen and Ruth Fainlight, and an evening of performative readings, using the work to reflect on the reciprocity of words and images, and the process of biography.
The launch of Somewhere Else Entirely in Nottingham is significant, as Fainlight’s husband Alan Sillitoe was famously from the city, and the couple met in a local bookshop. Andersen is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Visual Practice of Photography at Nottingham Trent University.
Emily Andersen
Somewhere Else Entirely (2023)
Funded by Bonington Gallery and Nottingham Trent University
Bonington Gallery is part of Curated & Created, NTU’s extra-curricular and public arts programme.
Emily Andersen is a London-based artist and graduate of the Royal College of Art. Her work has been exhibited in galleries 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; China Arts Museum, Shanghai; BOOKMARC Gallery, Tokyo; and LOWW Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
A number of her portraits are in the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery, London. She has won awards including the John Kobal prize for portraiture. Her third book Another Place was published in 2023. She is a senior lecturer in theory and practice of photography at Nottingham Trent University.
Contact Sarah Ragsdale: sarah@sarahragsdalepr.co.uk
Peter Matthews completed his studies in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and as a practicing artist was invited, as part of the Artists Access to Art Colleges scheme, to accept a residency within the School of Art and Design during 2008/09.
This exhibition presents work that Matthews developed during his residency. Issues such as war, politics, and the environment collectively fuse into sculptures that are poised to stimulate questions and speculation about the world and environment we live in.
Peter Matthews completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and as a practicing artist was invited, as part of the Artists Access to Art Colleges (AA2A) scheme, to accept a residency within the School of Art and Design during 2008/09.
Sculptures from the Media Stream presents work that Matthews has developed during his residency; questioning and exploring the ever-changing condition and identity of contemporary society. Issues such as war, politics, and the environment collectively fuse into sculptures that are provocatively poised to stimulate questions and speculation about the world and environment we live in.
This exciting and directional exhibition showcases a collection of innovative textile designs by Professor Junichi Arai and Dr Kinor Jiang from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. A series of striking combinations of colour and texture, their work captures the essence of oriental style with a contemporary direction.
Bonington Gallery is proud to present Metallic Sound as part of an exhibition exchange between The Hong Kong Polytechnic and Nottingham Trent University, reflecting the strong educational links between both universities through established fashion and textiles research.
The leading speciality paper merchant GFSmith celebrates 111 years of redefining how we view paper promotion with this fantastic heritage exhibition.
Having grown from a small family business in the late 1890’s, to a thriving company with over 150 members of staff and a global sales network, the business has adequate reason to celebrate the impact design has played on its success.
This exhibition will showcase material which encompasses both European and American promotions, featuring work from contributors such as Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Bill McKay and SEA Design.
