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Join us for a free workshop reimagining an alternative history of Nottingham School of Art – one that rejected the government strategy of 1843, and embraced local radical activism and self-organisation.

Get hands on with editing and remixing existing and new source material, and help create and expand this parallel universe.

Book your free tickets

Free and open to all. The structured workshop will run from 1–3 pm, followed by an informal opportunity for further exploration until 5 pm.

In a fictional parallel world, the Nottingham Independent Arts School is a thriving institution focused on people, planet and possibility. It offers space to think, to make and to share skills. The school is deeply integrated with the local community and guided by a focus on care and cross-disciplinarity.

This fictional vision was created by a group of participants who came together a few months ago to imagine an alternative history for Nottingham School of Art & Design. While the real-world School is rooted in a government plan to support British manufacture, the origins of its fictional equivalent lie in Nottingham’s radical history.

You are invited to this afternoon workshop to contribute to the next instalment of the parallel-world thought experiment. We will build on and extend the Nottingham Independent Arts School fiction, editing and remixing historical materials from the real-world Nottingham School of Art & Design via hands-on exploration to create a series of speculative documents that illustrate the history of the invented School.

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.

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.

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

Join us for an insightful gallery tour of our current exhibition, The Art Schools of the East Midlands by John Beck and Matthew Cornford, and the accompanying exhibition, Art [School] Histories in the Vitrines and foyer.

Find out how the exhibitions emerged as part of the Art School Project and uncover stories behind the work and its connections to Nottingham.

• Free, open to all
• Booking is required
• Please meet in the Bonington Foyer at 12.55pm for a prompt start
• The event will last up to an hour, within the gallery

Book your free place now

• Book now for Wednesday 8 November, 1 – 2 pm

Join Bonington Gallery’s Director Tom Godfrey for an insightful gallery tour of our current exhibition, The Art Schools of the East Midlands by John Beck and Matthew Cornford, and the accompanying exhibition, Art [School] Histories in the Vitrines and foyer.

Find out how the exhibitions emerged as part of the Art School Project and uncover stories behind the work and its connections to Nottingham.

• Free, open to all
• Booking is required
• Please meet in the Bonington Foyer at 12.55pm for a prompt start
• The event will last up to an hour, within the gallery

Book your free place now

• Book now for Tuesday 3 October, 1 – 2 pm

Did you study at Nottingham School of Art & Design? Or have you attended past events at Bonington Gallery? We’d love to hear from you!

We are collecting memories and photos to put on display in our next show, Art [School] Histories which will sit in our foyer and vitrines alongside our main gallery exhibition, The Art Schools of the East Midlands by John Beck and Matthew Cornford. We are interested in capturing and reflecting those informal moments – an exhibition or event you visited, life between lectures, studio time, trips, souvenirs, socialising with your peers, going to openings in Nottingham.

These could take the form of:

• photographs
• flyers
• posters
• ticket stubs
• typed up anecdotes/memories

How to submit your memories

Email your scans or hi-res photos to us boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk and we’ll print reproductions to add to our pinboard in the vitrines, in the gallery foyer. If you don’t have access to a scanner, then a clear photo taken on your phone will suffice. If you need our assistance in making a copy, or you have any queries about this invitation, then please email the address above.

Share on social media

You can also share them with us on Instagram or Facebook @boningtongallery by tagging us and using the hashtag #artschoolhistories so that we can re-share.

The exhibition starts on 21 September 2023, but we will be adding materials to the wall until the end of the exhibition on 2 December so feel free to contact us at any point between these dates. After the exhibition, the materials will be kept and added to an archive for the project.

By submitting your materials, the assumption is made that you are happy for their public display and retention in the exhibition archive. It might be that certain materials are used for promotional and publicity purposes by Bonington Gallery & Nottingham Trent University.