Representing Lives was a conference that took place in July 1997. The theme explored the multiplicity of women’s identities through the medium of writing biographies and autobiographies, and was funded by the English and Media Studies department at Nottingham Trent University (NTU).
Alongside the conference was an exhibition at Bonington Gallery titled Representing Lives, curated by Pauline Lucas. The exhibition showed four artists, who responded to an open-call which mirrored the themes of the conference, and showcased a mixture of sculpture, painting, photography, and fashion works. The motivation was to examine different perceptions of women in fact and fiction to create a female space within the gallery. To explore this idea, the exhibition featured Hilary Cartmel, Lubaina Himid, Sonia Lawson, and Denise Weston – a mixture of established artists and NTU graduates. Denise Weston studied alongside Donald Rodney, who is the focus of our Bonington Vitrines #25 exhibition.
In addition to the exhibition, Representing Lives was one of the first exhibitions to be documented on Bonington Gallery’s new website. The show lasted for a month in the physical space, but its legacy remained for much longer due to its online presence. In the words of exhibition organiser, Stella Couloutbanis, it was a show “enjoyed by visitors, and computer buffs!”.
On display in the Bonington Archive Cabinet (which can be found in the foyer space outside our main gallery) is the original exhibition proposal by Pauline Lucas, a call for papers for the conference, a memorandum from Stella Couloutbanis to Nick Freestone, a postcard from Pauline Lucas, and images from the original exhibition.
Curated by Alex Jovčić-Sas
Hilary Cartmel graduated from Nottingham Trent Polytechnic in 1980 with a degree in Sculpture. Hilary’s juggler series created out of her customary medium of steel, represents the chaos of modern life. ‘The Clumsy Juggler’ is an androgynous figure which suggests the turmoil of coping with the demands of children, running a busy household whilst pursuing a career.
Hilary has produced sculpture for exhibitions and has shown her work in galleries all over the UK. She has exhibited many pieces of public sculpture on the street, including Carmen which resides outside Nottingham’s Theatre Royal. Hilary has recently completed the gates to the Nottingham Fashion Centre on Convent Street and has produced 27 screens for Rotherham’s Transport Interchange as part of the Interchange’s upgrading.
Denise Weston graduated with an honours degree in Fine Art. She then took an MA in Fine Art at the former Birmingham Polytechnic. Denise currently teaches at Basford Hall College in Nottingham and is a visiting lecturer at NTU. She has exhibited across the country since graduating and is proactive in nurturing artistic talent in Nottingham, notably, by helping to co-ordinate the ‘Oldknows Gallery Exhibitions’ from 1988 – 1993.
Using images of clothing, Denise illustrates her own personal experiences of being a woman whilst escaping the direction of the female form. Flaneuse is a multimedia work which incorporates an image of Denise’s own jacket.
Denise said: “The word ‘Flaneuse’ is the female equivalent of the french word ‘Flaneur’ meaning the spectator and depictor of modern life. The work was inspired by a walk home from the studio late one evening and the realisation that there are still avenues – quite literally – which women feel they cannot explore.”
She elaborated: “I am concerned with using the process of painting as a metaphor; taking the blank canvas and ‘injecting life’ in a similar way that one gives life to inanimate objects, such as toys.”
Lubaina Himid, is a prolific artist who has exhibited across the UK and abroad and currently teaches Fine Art at The University of Central Lancashire. Lubaina has chosen three sets of paintings which challenge the common stereotype of ‘the architect’. For each set there are three paintings – the architect, model, and plan. The series challenges preconceptions of the archetypal architect, by depicting a black woman as the architect in each of the paintings, expressing her vision of a particular building.
Sonia Lawson exhibited six emotive paintings which conveyed the themes of injustice, grief and dignity which are integral to the Representing Lives exhibition.
Her Grieving Women painting (1991) depicts two female figures, one white, one black, standing serenely together as if in mutual and mute understanding of perhaps some deep grief or irrevocable loss. A situation holding no age or time gap.
Lawson’s Boadicea and her Daughters (1991) employs rich and sombre colours which convey a sense of serenity and a monumental dignity in the face of pain, persecution and injustice which they were made to suffer. An earlier work, Homage to Emily Bronte/Night Writing (1982) (from a series of five), is a tribute to the author of Wuthering Heights whose spirited intellect and stout resolve created something so bold and outlandish for its time, a novel that shook, shocked and delighted its readers. When Sonia first read it at the age of 11 it made her feel “wildly liberated” – she didn’t realise it was because she was empathising with one of our early feminists. One of the most striking themes prevalent in the exhibition, is the exploration of the bond between parent and child. Sonia’s painting Gallant Child depicts a child reaching up to the mother figure in a gesture of reassurance.
Sonia explained: “This painting is partly autobiographical, but many people will empathise with the notion of the child as the protector or comforter of a parent.”
Pauline Lucas studied Fine Art at the University of Reading in 1960, and later undertook an MA in Arts Criticism at Birkbeck Collage. Lucas began her career teaching art and art history at at a variety of different institutions across Nottingham and the East Midlands, while also maintaining a career as a freelance curator and exhibition maker.
Lucas’ curatorial work covered many aspects of feminist practice, working primarily with women’s groups who were producing works in a number of different mediums. Her shows were hosted across a number of Nottingham galleries, including Nottingham Castle and Angel Row Gallery. Lucas also published works in a series of catalogues which and publications such as Artline Newspaper.
Bonington Archive is a revolving display of material drawn from the Bonington Gallery Archive. If you have any materials relating to the programme, especially before 1989, please email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to host, in collaboration with New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary, this guest lecture by Keith Piper, BA (Hons) Fine Art alumnus and founding member of the BLK Art Group.
This event coincides with an exhibition of Keith’s work at New Art Exchange, Unearthing the Banker’s Bones, which opens from Friday 31 March to Sunday 2 July 2017. It also coincides with the current group exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, The Place is Here, which is open until Sunday 30 April.
Keith Piper (born in Malta, 1960) is a leading contemporary British artist, curator, critic and academic. Piper was a founder member of the ground breaking BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students who exhibited together throughout the country between 1982-83. Their work was noted for its boldly political stance and critique on the state of intercommunal, class and gender relations the UK.
Adopting a research-driven approach and using a variety of media, Piper’s work over the past 30 years has ranged from painting, photography and installation through to use of digital media, video and computer based interactivity.
Image: Keith Piper, Unearthing the Banker’s Bones, 2016, film still. A 70th anniversary commission for the Arts Council with Bluecoat and Iniva. © the artist
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to invite Audrey Reynolds to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.
Audrey is an artist and writer, her work includes sculpture, painting, text, film and spoken-word audio. She studied at Bath College of Art and at Chelsea College of Art, London.
Audrey is currently exhibiting in a group exhibition entitled All Men By Nature Desire To Know, which is on at Bonington Gallery until Friday 17 February 2017.
Solo exhibitions include:
Group exhibitions include:
A collection of her writing will be published by AkermanDaly in Spring 2017.
The Fine Art Live Lecture Series is an initiative by Nottingham Trent University’s Fine Art course, whereby creative practitioners are invited to deliver a lecture to current students. The lectures are also open to staff, alumni and the general public.
The lectures take place during term-time only.
Inscription: The Almshouse Tempera Project presented the work of four contemporary artists who have investigated the historical but still very active form of social housing known as the almshouse, through the early painting medium of egg tempera.
The artists Derek Hampson, Deborah Harty, Atsuhide Ito, and Peter Suchin also included actual material fragments from almshouses within the exhibition, inscribing both the image and the physical presence of the almshouse into the gallery.
The project was supported by Arts Council England and Nottingham Community Housing Association.
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.
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.
