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Join us for the launch of the second exhibition in our 2026-27 season, an exhibition of photography, video and archival material by the critically acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Andy Earl (b. 1955). Spanning four decades, the exhibition traces Earl’s remarkable career, from his time as a photography student at Nottingham Trent University (1974-1977) to the present day.

Across a career that includes more than 200 album covers, editorial commissions for Rolling Stone, NME and Q magazine, and projects for Canon, Samsung, Deutsche Bank and the BBC, Earl has photographed some of the most influential cultural figures of the past half-century.

Enjoy a free welcome drink, delicious food (first come, first served!) and music.

• Free, all welcome
• Photography will be taking place (please let our photographer know if you don’t wish to have your photo taken)
• Refreshments and music
• There is a lift and stair access to the Gallery, and an accessible toilet

They wanted the freedom to party, the state saw them as the enemy within. The untold story of the free party movement, Castlemorton and the Criminal Justice Act, and how its impact sparked a revolution around the world, from raves and festivals, to politics and protest.

Free Party: A Folk History is a major new, independently made, feature documentary following the birth of the free party movement in the late 80s and early 90s and the impact it’s had on our present times. The film follows the inception of the movement, a meeting between ravers and the new age travellers during Thatcher’s last days in power, and the explosive years that followed, leading up the infamous Castlemorton free festival in 1992 – the largest ever illegal rave, which provoked the drastic change of the laws of trespass with the notorious introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994.

The screening (1hr 44mins) will be followed by a Q+A with Director Aaron Trinder and contributor Alan Lodge, convened by Bonington Gallery Curator & Director Tom Godfrey.

The gallery will remain open 5-6pm for those wishing to visit Alan Lodge’s exhibition prior to the screening.

Content Warning: Film contains nudity, violence, substance use, smoking, foul language, Flashing lights and strobing patterns might affect photosensitive viewers. Viewers must be aged 16+.

Bonington Gallery is delighted to present Flash and Blur, an exhibition of photography, video and archival material by the critically acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Andy Earl (b. 1955). Spanning four decades, the exhibition traces Earl’s remarkable career, from his time as a photography student at Nottingham Trent University (1974-1977) to the present day.

In 1978, Earl exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery in London as part of an exhibition exploring contemporary European photography. The painterly quality in Earl’s photographs attracted the attention of music impresario Malcolm McLaren, who subsequently commissioned Earl to create the cover for Bow Wow Wow’s debut album – a re-enactment of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. In 1979, Earl was invited to participate in Venice 79, a major international survey of contemporary photography presented as an extension to Venice Biennale series. These early opportunities and exhibitions helped establish Earl’s reputation on the international stage and marked important milestones in his burgeoning career.

Following an accidental kick to a tripod during a photoshoot, Earl embraced the creative possibilities of combining movement, slow shutter speeds and sharp flash photography. The resulting aesthetic became his signature ‘flash and blur’ technique, defining much of his work from the late 1970s through to the 1990s and attracting the admiration of photographers including David Bailey. Accompanying many of Earl’s photographs are stories and anecdotes that reveal the encounters and relationships Earl developed with his subjects, several of which will be shared in the exhibition.

Across a career that includes more than 200 album covers, editorial commissions for Rolling Stone, NME and Q magazine, and projects for Canon, Samsung, Deutsche Bank and the BBC, Earl has photographed some of the most influential cultural figures of the past half-century. His subjects include Annie Lennox, Madonna, Morrissey, Pink Floyd, Oasis, Prince, Mick Jagger, King Charles III, and Sir David Attenborough. In the 1990s, Earl produced the iconic photographs of Johnny Cash used for American Recordings, the first album in Cash’s celebrated collaboration with producer Rick Rubin.

Beyond his photographic practice, Earl has directed and contributed to more than 20 music videos. Among his most pioneering projects was his work on the Michel Gondry-directed video for The Rolling Stones’ Bob Dylan cover Like a Rolling Stone, which combined 12,000 still photographs captured using two handheld cameras and animated in sequence. The resulting visual effect echoed Earl’s flash and blur experiments from the late 1970s and proved highly influential in the development of the technique later known as Bullet Time, most famously employed by The Wachowskis in The Matrix films.

Through photography, film and archive, Flash and Blur celebrates Andy Earl’s enduring contribution to visual culture and reveals the innovative spirit that has defined his work for more than four decades.

Credit for main image: Andy Earl: Duran Duran (Rio), London 1983.

Flash and Blur is a continuation in a series of recent solo exhibitions by Andy Earl that first took place at TheGallery at Arts University Bournemouth – See or be Seen (October 2025) and the follow up Andy Earl X Bankside Yards (May 2026), both curated by AUB TheGallery Curator Violet M McClean.

Join us for the launch of the first exhibition in our 2026-27 season, a major survey of photographer Alan Lodge (b. 1953), whose work has documented British counterculture, protest movements and grassroots activism for more than five decades.

Featuring more than 100 photographs alongside 35mm slide projections, moving-image works, personal archives, and previously unseen material, Common Grounds provides an expansive overview of Lodge’s practice and of a life dedicated to activism.

As part of the Bonington Vitrines series, we’re delighted to present The Velvet Acronyms – It’s a Wonderful Protest. A collaboration between artists Anna Li and Simon Raven, the body of work uses satirical ‘crip humour’ to challenge ableism in the arts, from the ghettoisation of disability art to condescendingly ‘celebratory’ forms of inclusion.

Enjoy a free welcome drink, delicious food (first come, first served!) and music.

• Free, all welcome
• Photography will be taking place (please let our photographer know if you don’t wish to have your photo taken)
• Refreshments and music
• There is a lift and stair access to the Gallery, and an accessible toilet

Bonington Gallery is delighted to present Common Grounds: Counterculture & Confrontation Since 1976, the first major survey exhibition of photographer Alan Lodge (b.1953), one of the most significant chroniclers of British counterculture, protest movements, and grassroots activism over the past 50 years.

Common Grounds brings together a wealth of material documenting travelling communities, free festivals, free party and rave culture, environmental campaigns, and anti-war protest since 1976. As a former member of a travelling community, Lodge offers a perspective on people, places, and subcultures that is raw, uncompromising, yet intimate. The strength of Lodge’s work lies not only in its photographic and documentary quality, but also in its evidential power, having on numerous occasions been used to protect and advocate for the very communities it represents.

Featuring over 100 photographs alongside 35mm slide projections, moving image, personal archives, and previously unseen material, Common Grounds will be a spatially ambitious exhibition that provides an expansive overview of Lodge’s practice and a life dedicated to activism. It also includes legal correspondence and documentation from Lodge’s own encounters with police and authorities, foregrounding themes concerning the shifting relationships between collective identity, civil liberty, dissent, environmental responsibility, public space, and state authority.

Lodge’s work has appeared in publications and journals worldwide. His photographs have also been featured in documentaries and films, including Operation Solstice for Channel 4, Jeremy Deller’s BBC documentary Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 (2018) and most recently Aaron Trinder’s documentary Free Party: A Folk History (2023). He was interviewed for Daniel Ward’s film, Lonesome Ghosts (2025), shown at Peer, London and spoke to Stewart Lee about the Battle of the Beanfield in the R4 podcast ‘What happened to Counter-Culture?’

Alan Lodge’s work has been shown in exhibitions across the UK including Radical Landscapes (2022) at Tate Liverpool. International exhibitions include Black & White Surveillance (2020) with TG at the Salon de Normandy, Paris. His work has also appeared in publications & journals including The Guardian, Independent, i-D, Select, Café Royal Books, Sounds, Purple, Huck Magazine, Flash Art, DJ, Radio Times, New Statesmen & Society and Squall. His publications include Stonehenge: Solstice Ritual, a photographic account of the rituals taking place at Stonehenge.
Alan received a BA(hons) (1993) and MA (2013) in Photography from Nottingham Trent University.

alanlodge.co.uk

A publication featuring an interview between Alan Lodge and Jeremy Deller will be available during the exhibition.

Photographs by Jules Lister

For the second consecutive year, Bonington Gallery proud to collaborate with Nottingham School of Art & Design to curate and commission a new digital artwork for the Design and Digital Arts (DaDA) building. This year’s commission is by artist Ibiye Camp, coinciding with her solo exhibition layt de kam at Bonington Gallery (17 January – 7 March 2025).

Camp’s commissioned work employs photogrammetry technologies and draws from a personal narrative surrounding a family funeral. The piece is inspired by Chinua Achebe’s short story The Sacrificial Egg, which explores the tension between Nigerian traditions and modern Western influences. This theme resonates strongly with Camp’s practice, which interrogates the intersections of tradition, spirituality, and modernity through both digital and physical media.

The completed work will be showcased on the large-scale screen in the DaDA building lobby and within the immersive 270-degree projection space on the first floor. As part of the commission, Camp will also lead two student workshops and deliver a public lecture, offering further insight into her creative process and thematic concerns.

Installation views of Ibiye Camp’s commissioned work A Rewrapping, 2026.

Photogrammetry workshops with students

For our eighth display from the Bonington Archive, we are looking at an exhibition in our more recent history: House of Wisdom (September 27th – October 27th 2018). This exhibition was staged in the areas outside of the gallery and showcased hundreds of objects, books, articles, research and furniture which looked into the political power of books and libraries over the past century.

The central focus of the cabinet display is an A4 folio which contained over 100 newspaper articles around the closure of libraries, censorship of texts, new discoveries of ancient texts and political actions around libraries and freedom of speech. This is displayed alongside photo documentation, the original exhibition text, and a flyer listing the artists involved in the original project.

As part of the original project, there was a full public programme which took place across the city. All the recorded content from those talks, film screenings, and performances can be found by following this link

Archive cabinet was curated by Alex Jovčić-Sas, the original exhibition by Cüneyt Çakırlar

Please note, this is an archive presentation of a historical exhibition which occurred in 2018.

Original exhibition text:

Throughout centuries, libraries have been perceived as places where knowledge on life and space is organised, read, and interpreted, yet at certain times, their political significance are underestimated. Public libraries have been important symbols of political power and formation of cultural identity. They play a significant role in the political struggle for independence, as centres of democratic ideals, such as free access to cultural heritage and information. As public spaces, they are essential for bringing people together to share information, and they become even more important during times of collective resistance and protests for freedom.

Curated by the Istanbul-based Collective Çukurcuma, House of Wisdom explores the political power of books and libraries in our century, and is presented as a travelling exhibition/library that explores the increasing levels of censorship on information and the current sociopolitical situation in and around Turkey. It started its journey in the non-profit art space, Dzialdov, Berlin. The show moved to Istanbul as part of the 15th Istanbul Biennial’s public program, and then to the art space Framer Framed in Amsterdam, as part of the Amsterdam Art Weekend 2017 programme.

The exhibition and public programme of events now reside in Nottingham, with a panel discussion at Primary, in June 2018, followed by the exhibition here at Bonington Gallery and across the city, see public programme events (curated by Cüneyt Çakırlar) below for full details.

Artists include: Mohamed Abdelkarim, Burak Arıkan, Mahmoud Bakhshi, Yael Bartana, Mehtap Baydu, Kürşat Bayhan, Ruth Beale, Ekin Bernay, Burçak Bingöl, Nicky Broekhuysen, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Cansu Çakar, Ramesch Daha, Işıl Eğrikavuk, Didem Erk, Foundland Collective, Deniz Gül, Beril Gür, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, İstanbul Queer Art Collective (Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergül), Ali Kazma, Yazan Khalili, Göksu Kunak, Mona Kriegler, Fehras Publishing Practices, Elham Rokni, Natascha Sadr Haghighian & Ashkan Sepahvand, Sümer Sayın, Erinç Seymen, Bahia Shehab, Walid Siti, Ali Taptık, Erdem Taşdelen, Özge Topçu, Viron Erol Vert, Ali Yass, Eşref Yıldırım, Ala Younis

CURATED BY COLLECTIVE ÇUKURCUMA

House Of Wisdom was in collaboration with Queer Art Projects (London, UK), Bonington Gallery, Primary, Bromley House Library, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, and Five Leaves Bookshop.

Join us for the launch of our final exhibitions of the season: THROUGH A MIRROR, DARKLY – a film commission from Turner-Prize nominated artist Naeem Mohaiemen and the 30th instalment of our Vitrines featuring a collection of photography from Baltimore-based photographer John Dean.

THROUGH A MIRROR, DARKLY is a new three-channel film by Turner Prize nominated artist Naeem Mohaiemen. It explores memorialisation, protest, and political violence through the lens of events in May 1970, when American students protesting domestic racism and overseas wars were met by state violence.

As part of the 30th instalment of our Bonington Vitrines series, we’re delighted to present A Semester in Nottingham, 1976, an exhibition of photographs by Baltimore-based John Dean. Captured during his time as a visiting student to NTU in 1976, these photographs offer a powerful glimpse into Nottingham life during a transformative era.

Enjoy a free welcome drink, delicious food (first come, first served!) and music.

• Free, all welcome
• Photography will be taking place (please let our photographer know if you don’t wish to have your photo taken)
• Refreshments and music
• There is a lift and stair access to the Gallery, and an accessible toilet

Bonington Gallery is delighted to announce layt de kam, a newly commissioned body of film and textile work by multi-disciplinary artist Ibiye Camp, exploring the complex interplay between infrastructure, care, and resilience along the coast of West Africa.

At the heart of the exhibition is a critical reflection on the deployment of temporary power ships off the coasts of various West African cities — an intervention intended to address unstable energy infrastructures and shortages. The title, layt de kam (translated as “light is coming”), evokes both hope and uncertainty, highlighting the precarity of such power solutions while celebrating the enduring strength of coastal communities.

Combining spatial intervention, film and textiles, the exhibition will examine how brutalist infrastructure looms ominously over the intimate and everyday life on the shore. Central to the exhibition is a new film, GLOW, a speculative child’s tale that imagines the arrival of this foreign visitor who brings light. Created using point cloud reconstructions, the trace of the landscape is dependent on illumination, shadows and reflections to create the shapes and forms. 

Camp further translates these digital landscapes into tactile form by laser-cutting point cloud stills into Kola Nut-dyed fabric. This process embeds the digital with the material, using concentrated light to cut cloth traditionally used by mothers to wrap their children—an enduring symbol of care and ancestral knowledge.

layt de kam further interrogates the broader geopolitical implications of temporary power infrastructures. Shaped by deregulation, privatisation, and conflict, these systems often reinforce global dependencies rather than fostering self-sufficiency. Drawing on theorist Keller Easterling’s concept of “extrastatecraft,” Camp reveals how non-state actors influence through infrastructure, turning energy access into a site of control.

By transforming disrupted landscapes into material memory, layt de kam offers a powerful narrative of resistance, care, and the entanglement of light, technology, and power.

Sound artist FAUZIA has made the soundtrack to Ibiye’s film GLOW.

Read an in-conversation between Ibiye Camp and Gökçe Günel, exploring the phenomenon of power-ships here.

Press:
– Art + Australia: ‘Floating Power Houses: A Conversation’.
– Yamo: 15 Questions with Ibiye Camp by Gary Grimes.

Bonington Gallery is delighted to present To Farse All Things, a two-person exhibition by William English and Sandra Cross, bringing together film, photography, sculpture, sound, and archival material formed independently and collaboratively over several decades.

To Farse All Things offers a rare opportunity to explore the intertwined lives and practices of two artists whose work resists categorisation. Through a shared and uncompromising commitment to experimentation, hospitality, and social engagement, English and Cross have cultivated a body of work that is as generous as it is radical. Their ten-year project, The Dining Room, can be seen as a living piece of performance art—emblematic of their broader practice which questions the boundaries between roles and purpose of cultural space. The lines between cast & audience, host & guest, artist & participant are constantly shifting and being shifted.

William English (b. Leicester) moved to London in the early 1970s to study filmmaking. In 1975, he produced a now-iconic series of photographs of Vivienne Westwood in her and Malcolm McLaren’s seminal punk boutique, SEX. The series, Venus with a Severed Leg, has become synonymous with the era, with writer Paul Gorman describing it as “the holy grail of punk photographs.”

Sandra Cross (b. Northamptonshire) began her career as a copywriter before relocating to London in the mid-1970s, where she worked for a number of prominent literary agencies and publishers. Her professional life introduced her to a network of West End eateries, sparking a deep and lasting interest in food as both a social and cultural medium. She began hosting suppers at home for friends and acquaintances, laying the foundation for a lifelong exploration of food as an intersection for connection, memory, and artistic expression.

The pair met in the late 1970s and soon embarked on a shared project that would channel their shared interests and become a defining period in their collaborative practice. Motivated by a shared excitement for hosting and an interest in organic and whole foods (progressive for that period), they pooled their limited resources to renovate the basement of a Victorian building near London’s Borough Market. The result was The Dining Room—a groundbreaking vegetarian restaurant (though they resisted the label) that operated for a decade. Serving dishes such as Kasha Knish amongst a programme of exhibitions, screenings, book launches, and gigs, The Dining Room was more than a restaurant. Its ethos was radically inclusive: customers ranged from Shakespeare’s Globe founder Sam Wanamaker and underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger to nurses finishing late shifts at nearby Guy’s Hospital. Staff were often friends who may have struggled to find work elsewhere, and leftover food was regularly shared with those in need.

Following the closure of The Dining Room in 1990, Sandra continued to explore food as a subject through works such as What Did You Eat Today?, a series of filmed interviews examining personal relationships with food. Other notable works include MMs Bar (Trunk Records, 2011), a vinyl record composed of train catering announcements recorded during weekly journeys between London and Leicester, and Limbo (2019), a film narrated from journals written during this period whilst Sandra’s mother’s health was in decline, layered over footage of those same train journeys.

William continued to make films and work as a rare book dealer. His film Heated Gloves (2019) documents his friend and Dining Room regular Maurice Seddon, an eccentric inventor known for creating electrically heated clothing. The film features both intimate footage and clips from Seddon’s appearances on international talk shows, including David Letterman and Johnny Carson. After Seddon’s death, William discovered a trove of recorded phone calls spanning 30 years, which he compiled into the vinyl release The Seddon Tapes, Volume 1 (2018). These recordings—such as the surreal and humorous “Chest Freezer” exchange—formed the basis of William’s approach to his long-running Resonance 104.4 FM radio show Wavelength, which he has hosted for 15 years.

In 2020, William published Perfect Binding, a psychographic & counter-historical portrait of Leicester and changing attitudes towards fashion, music and art of the 1960’s and beyond, told and reflected through the lives of his family and childhood friends, including BOY boutique co-founder Stephane Raynor, artist and eccentric Jim Mellors (aka Victoria Ashley), and the late fashion photographer David Parkinson.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a follow-up to Perfect Binding entitled To Farse All Things (Designed by Daniel R. Wilson) will be published and made available from the gallery. This will be an anthology of work, interviews, and articles and is intended as a companion piece to the exhibition.

A broad selection of films by William & Sandra have been archived by LUX, an arts organisation that supports and promotes visual artists working with the moving image.

Exhibition curated by Tom Godfrey, Curator & Director of Bonington Gallery.

• • Listen again to ‘To Farse All Things’ on Resonance FM.
• • Read a review of the exhibition on Corridor 8.
• • Read our October blogpost ‘Memories of the Dining Room’.

Image at top of page: Left – William English in Dining Room kitchen circa 1982 photograph by Sandra Cross / Right – Sandra Cross in Dining Room kitchen circa 1982 photograph by William English.