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.
A solo exhibition by Debra Swann consolidating her artistic research through sculpture, video and photography.
The show was an exploration of historical domestic spaces and the personas that may evolve through these spaces. Thinking about the repetition of tasks and the familiar sites of the home, narratives are created to comment on relentless labour and the strangeness of the comings and goings of the home.
A number of historic locations become backdrops, stages or sites for making work. The re-contextualization of objects made for such places took the viewer through subtle juxtapositions of time and reality. Blurring the relationship between fact and fiction the viewer could question what they are looking at and the process by which history is written and how we establish truth.
As part of Nottingham Trent University’s 170th Anniversary of Art and Design, this exhibition showcased a collection of images by acclaimed architectural photographer, Martine Hamilton Knight D.Litt (hon).
The exhibition looked back over the last 20 years in recognition of the innovative and iconic buildings that make up Nottingham’s skyline.
Featuring the work of Hopkins Architects, this exhibition included the stunning Inland Revenue building, Nottingham Trent University’s Newton and Arkwright building and the University of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus, as well as other Nottingham Trent University buildings.
Venue
Newton Building
Goldsmith Street
Nottingham
NG1 4BU
An exhibition of over 100 selected works from Nottingham Trent University alumni, held across the University’s City site. The work detailed the impact that our alumni have had internationally on the visual arts and creative industries.
Just a few of the alumni who were involved with the exhibition:
Urban artist Jon Burgerman, Turner prize winner Simon Starling, Artist duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Photographer Andy Earl, Film director Jonathan Glazer, Knitwear designer Motohiro Tanji, Actor and comedian Paul Kaye, Sculptor Wolfgang Buttress, Landscape designer Sarah Price, Paper cut artist Rob Ryan, Visual artist Lucy Orta, Furniture designer Alexander Taylor
Plus many more; some of the exhibits on show were newly commissioned work special for the NTU Alumni Show.
For more details about In The Making and all events and activities surrounding Since 1843, please visit the Since 1843 webpage.
Click here to download the exhibition audio guide.
A catalogue featuring the profiles of all the exhibitors is available to buy online, or directly from the Bonington Art shop.
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
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.
Along with various video and photo works, Dick Jewell’s solo exhibition Now & Then also includes a chance to get involved with one of the art works.
Take a selfie in front of Dick’s large-scale photo collage War & Peace and upload it to instagram using the hashtag #djwarandpeace for the chance to win a signed copy of Four Thousand Threads.
The winning entry will be selected by Dick Jewell.
The competition will run for the duration of the exhibition – so you have until Saturday 23 February to visit the exhibition and get your selfies uploaded!
UPDATE: The winning entry came from Photography Student, Alice Rodgers — Dick particularly liked the angle of this selfie, which you’d expect from a BA (Hons) Photography student at NTU’s School of Art & Design…
Thanks again to everyone who entered! Check out all of the #DJWarandPeace selfies here.
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.
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
Alan Lodge, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) BA and MA Photography alumnus, comes from a free festival and traveller background. Living in old buses, trucks and caravans, he drove around the country on ‘the circuit’ with his family and friends. Since the late 1970s he has been photographing events and the people around him.
Documenting all aspects of alternative lifestyles and sub-cultures, Alan has photographed many free and commercial events, environment protests, land rights demonstrations, and rave culture. Providing insight that only people who have been accepted into a community can really achieve, his aim has been to present a more positive view of people and communities that are frequently misrepresented.
The process has not been easy, as many people are suspicious of anyone with a camera and their motives. Conflict with the police in more recent years has become a fact of life, as has eviction from land and squats, and difficulties with children’s education when being continually moved on.
Alan had produced work for publications, galleries, events, and public spaces. Moving beyond photography, he has experimented with mixed media involving printed and projected text. During his MA at NTU, Alan specialised in issues surrounding representation, presenting himself in print and audio-visual format. A member of the National Union of Journalists, he is a documentary photographer, a photo-journalist and ‘storyteller’ always on the lookout for another tale to tell.
Curated by photographer Jason Evans, this new exhibition brought together artefacts from our industrial, consumer society. Handmade signage recalls local commerce, pre-globalisation, and highlights ongoing transitions from analogue to digital. Some of the objects on show remain in circulation today, yet serve as a nostalgic reminder of the technological changes in our recent past.
The exhibition featured pages from the archive of Dick Hambidge, a sign writer from East Kent, who documented his works in meticulous photographic albums, presenting an alternative record of provincial life.
Also on show were a selection of erudite political ‘lampoons’ by Ditchling printmaker Philip Hagreen, loaned by Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. Hagreen’s wood engravings feel as relevant now as when they were published eighty years ago.
Visitors were able to see an intriguing selection of original items from Clark Brothers of Manchester, who continue to hand produce point-of-sale marketing materials for a disappearing High Street.
Finally, the exhibition also featured an interactive photo opportunity, social media content, a marketing soundtrack and a new series of Evans’ own binary screen prints. Visitors were also advised to look out for people in Nottingham who participated in a project that Jason is running alongside the exhibition; they wore T-shirts which feature a wood-engraving by Philip Hagreen.
All images courtesy of Julian Lister and the artists.
Jason Evans (b. 1968) is a multidisciplinary photographer who, since the early 1990s, has had a broad cultural practice. His output has developed to include writing and teaching alongside applied image making. He works around art, fashion and street photography tropes, making images which are often informed by vernacular culture. His long-term projects with musicians Four Tet, Caribou and Radiohead resulted in influential sleeve imagery and portraits which seek to redefine the relationships between sound and image.
Since 2004, Evans has maintained The Daily Nice, which celebrates simple pleasures as their own reward. Every day an image of something which made him happy is presented on this one page, non-archived website.
His work is exhibited internationally, and his game-changing series Strictly is held in the Tate collection. Solo shows include his nomination for the Grange Prize at the AGO in Toronto and a retrospective of his Fashion work at the Hyeres Festival du Mode. His monographs include NYLPT (Mack, 2012) and Pictures for looking at (Printed Matter, 2014).
Thursday 18 May, 7 pm – 8.30 pm – Jason Evans Exhibition Walkthrough
Join us on the penultimate day of Jason Evans’ curated exhibition for an informal and open discussion between Evans & Bonington Gallery curator Tom Godfrey. Hear more about the objects and works on show and the stories and histories that informed their selection.