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Location: Lecture Theatre 2, Newton Building, NTU City Campus

Nottingham Trent University is delighted to invite Dick Jewell to speak as part of the 2019 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.

Working across film, photography and photo-collage, Jewell has inhabited both gallery and commercial contexts, exhibiting his work internationally at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Serpentine Gallery (London), as well as producing music videos and promos for musicians including Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack

Growing up in Croydon Jewell spent much of his youth “lugging around an Olympus OM-1 Motor Drive, taking portraits of strangers at any opportunity”  going on to publishing his first book Found Photos in 1978, the same year he completed his MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art.

In anticipation of Jewell’s most significant solo show Now & Then (opening January), take a read of this article on his career as an artist/filmmmaker by Dazed & Confused.


Delivered by Dance4, Nottdance Festival returned once more with its internationally renowned innovative and entertaining perspective that continues to question ‘What can dance be?

Bonington Gallery was proud to host a number of performances in our Waverley theatre and a photography exhibition A Dance4 Story by David Severn.

This series of photographs were commissioned by Dance4 to take a look behind the scenes and create a visual narrative about the work the organisation does with artists, communities, young people and venues. The project also explored Dance4 in the context of Nottingham and demonstrates its dedication to the city and wider region.

A DANCE4 STORY by DAVID SEVERN (UK)

This series of photographs was commissioned by Dance4 to take a look behind the scenes and create a visual narrative about the work the organisation does with artists, communities, young people and venues. The project also explores Dance4 in the context of Nottingham and demonstrates its dedication to the city and the wider region.

David Severn is a social documentary and fine art photographer, based in Nottingham. His photographs have been exhibited at QUAD (Derby), Light House (Wolverhampton), Guernsey Photography Festival, London Film Museum and Nottingham Castle. Photographs from his project Thanks Maggie (2012) are currently on exhibition at the FORMAT International Photography Festival (Derby). He is a finalist in the Magnum Photos/Ideas Tap award and won Grand Prize at the Nottingham Castle Annual Open last year.

“I have a strong relationship with Dance4 and have been photographing performances for them as a commercial photographer for several years. After knowing the organisation for so long and feeling part of the team, I wanted to make a series of photographs that looked more contemplatively at the great work they do with international artists, young talented dancers and local community groups. My work is typically concerned with the connection between people land place. I’m particularly interested in photographing my home city of Nottingham and the surrounding county, so this project was a way of bringing my own curiosities as a photographer to a commission I could develop over a sustained period of time. It’s been a privilege to once again work closely with Dance4 to make this work and l’d like to extend a warm thanks to the whole team for allowing me such creative freedom.”

David Severn
Dance4 Logo

Now & Then will be Dick Jewell’s most significant solo exhibition in recent years, bringing together a wide range of works produced over a 30-year period. Working across film, photography and photo-collage, Jewell has inhabited both gallery and commercial contexts, exhibiting his work internationally at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Serpentine Gallery (London). He has also produced music videos and promos for musicians including Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack.

As the title suggests, Now & Then chronicles progression: both from a technological perspective through the shifting media across Jewell’s work, and also in regards to people, as demonstrated by Jewell re-visiting his seminal 1989 film Headcases (shot on Super 8) whereby he has repeated the same set of questions to the same subjects 30 years on.

Other key works that will be on display include The Box, a huge bank of 200 framed photographs that Jewell took from four TVs over seven days in 1980; Four Thousand Threads, which presents a ‘Chinese Whispers’ version of a Google image search; and an audience participatory work entitled War & Peace, in which visitors are encouraged to take selfies against a backdrop and disseminate them online.

In a world bombarding us with millions of images, Now & Then is just presenting a few thousand.

Exhibition resources:
Associated Events

Fine Art Live Lecture Present: Dick Jewell
Thursday 31 January, 5.15 pm – 7.30 pm
Lecture Theatre 2, Newton building, NTU City Campus

Bonington Film Night #9: Dick Jewell Kinky Gerlinky
Thursday 20 February, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Bonington Gallery, Bonington building, NTU City Campus

Bonington Vitrines #10: Jewell
Friday 18 January – Saturday 23 February
Bonington Foyer


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