Imprints of Culture explored the contemporary production and use of Indian block prints. Like few other objects, block prints embody richly diverse histories that have been shaped by trade, conquest and colonisation, technological innovation and entrepreneurship.
This exhibition showed how block printing, one of India’s foremost crafts, has not only played a role in the ritual life of the subcontinent but also in the creation of visual identity. Integral to caste dress and modern urban style, block prints have been a significant source of revenue through centuries of domestic and international trade.
This show included block prints from leading centres of the craft in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, including traditional designs as well as innovations. It has been developed in collaboration with block printers in these areas as well as fashion designer, Aneeth Arora.
This exhibition was supported by the British Academy (International Partnership and Mobility Scheme, 2014-17). The research underpinning it was funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2012-14).
Read a recent Q&A with the curator, Eiluned Edwards, as she talks to Aesthetica magazine about the exhibition.
Preview
Wednesday 24 February, 5 pm – 7.30 pm
Joining us for the special preview event will be Deirdre Figueiredo, MBE, who will deliver a welcome speech at 6 pm.
Deirdre is the Director of Craftspace in Birmingham. Aside from the Crafts Council, Craftspace is the only independent crafts promotion, development and touring agency in the country and as such occupies a unique position in the national infrastructure for the contemporary crafts. It supports the creative industries whilst also building social and human capital within communities.
Apart from her position at Craftspace, Deirdre has also played a wider voluntary role contributing to cultural policy and strategy through a range of advisory panels, boards and steering groups including the Museums Association Equal Opportunities panel, Regional Council Member of Arts Council West Midlands, member of Arts Council Capital Lottery panel, Creative and Cultural Skills Advisory Panel and Birmingham City Council cultural strategy working groups.
Block Printing Demonstration
To coincide with the exhibition, Bonington Gallery is delighted to host a public block printing demonstration with Abduljabbar M. Khatri, a renowned block printer from Kachchh district, Gujarat, India.
During the exhibition, students at Nottingham Trent University and visitors of the exhibition were invited to design their very own personalised monogram to be in with a chance of winning a limited edition print from the Alan Kitching Collection. The rules were simple; the monogram had to:
1) include your own initials
2) use one letter from the typefaces used in the Alan Kitching Collection. The subsequent letters could come from anywhere: another typeface, hand-drawn, a found letter…
3) be rendered in a way that it tells us something about the designer.
Entries were then uploaded with the hashtag #NTUmonogram to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
The competition ended on Sunday 18 October 2015, and the winner (selected by Alan Kitching himself) was announced on Thursday 22 October.
Read all about the winning entry and the runners-up in this story on our blog.
To find out more, read the full competition details.
This exhibition celebrated the collaboration between two typographic forces: Alan Kitching, a leading practitioner in letterpress, typography and design; and Monotype, global trailblazers in type and home to some of the world’s most popular typefaces.
The exhibition featured the Alan Kitching Collection which celebrated the lives of five very influential graphic designers: Tom Eckersley, Abram Games, FHK Henrion, Josef Müller-Brockmann, and Paul Rand.
The show revealed the process behind the making of the Collection; following Alan’s journey from research and sketches, through the Monotype archive, to Alan’s workshop and the finished printed pieces.
#NTUAlanKitching #Monotype
During the exhibition, students at Nottingham Trent University and visitors of the exhibition were invited to design their very own personalised monogram to be in with a chance of winning a limited edition print from the Alan Kitching Collection. The rules were simple; the monogram had to:
1) include your own initials
2) use one letter from the typefaces used in the Alan Kitching Collection. The subsequent letters could come from anywhere: another typeface, hand-drawn, a found letter…
3) be rendered in a way that it tells us something about the designer.
Entries were then uploaded with the hashtag #NTUmonogram to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
The competition ended on Sunday 18 October 2015, and the winner (selected by Alan Kitching himself) was announced on Thursday 22 October.
Read all about the winning entry and the runners-up in this story on our blog.
To find out more, read the full competition details.
Bonington Gallery was delighted to present Publishing Rooms, a commissioned exhibition concept by Andrew and Iain Foxall of Foxall Studio, London.
Over the past decade, mass-publishing has moved from the print houses into the hands of anyone owning a smartphone. Publishing is no longer a privilege, but an involuntary expression of our multiple identities and allegiances.
Exploring themes of self-expression and posterity, Bonington Gallery became a facility for self-publishing.
Set within a constructed environment that combines the appearance of an abstracted newsroom with the functionality of a photo booth, visitors were invited to interact with technological and analogue devices designed and implemented by Foxall. These tools for self-publishing will provide opportunity to further explore our obsessions with mediated forms of self-expression.
Referencing and subverting everything from zine culture to the selfie phenomenon, Publishing Rooms provided opportunities to go beyond the prescribed presets found in our social media outlets, generating new variables for the production of self-imagery and the subjective understanding of ourselves.
Referencing and subverting everything from zine culture to the selfie phenomenon, Publishing Rooms provided opportunities to go beyond the prescribed presets found in our social media outlets, generating new variables for the production of self-imagery and the subjective understanding of ourselves.
Brothers Andrew and Iain started Foxall Studio in 2006 to combine their experience and vision in art, fashion and innovation. As a multi-disciplinary studio, Foxall direct brand-led experiences ranging from brand creation, art direction and magazine design, through to exhibition design.
The brothers work with designers, developers, photographers and artists to create collaborations that challenge the paradigms of brand / experience building. Recent projects include a commissioned brand campaign by British jewellery designer, Jo Hayes Ward; contributions to an installation for Selfridges, London; and a music film released exclusively on Nowness.
Andrew and Iain also regularly lecture and run workshops at The British Council, London College of Communication, The Royal College of Art and Liverpool John Moores.
All the images created within Publishing Rooms were published directly to publishingrooms.com. Here, you can view and save your scanner camera portraits, and view the most recent images made using the Body Scan and Wall Scanner installations. From there, you can also share these elsewhere on the web, with the ability to share them directly to social media platforms. Tag your posts #PublishingRooms on Instagram and Twitter and share your exhibition experience with us.
Our Gallery invigilators and Foxall Studios’ intern Marion will also be kept us up-to-date with the exhibition via the blog. In case you missed it, you can read Andrew and Iain’s introduction to the project and get an early look at the scanner camera development here.
An informal discussion looking at the changing importance of printed matter and whether it still holds up as a relevant and vital contemporary media format. This will take place on 26th April, 1 pm, in the gallery space.
Guest Speakers:
Matt Gill (Raw Print), Andrew Foxall (Foxall Studio), Iain Foxall (Foxall Studio), Hugh Frost (Landfill Editions), Alex Smith (Ideas on Paper), chaired by Tom Godfrey
This exhibition was open as part of the Nottingham Art Weekender on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May 2016, where many of the venues listed on the Nottingham Art Map invited the public to take part in their events and exhibitions in a celebration of the visual arts scene in Nottingham.
Nottingham Trent University is delighted to invite Ruth Angel Edwards to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.
Edwards is a multimedia artist whose work explores the communication of ideology through popular culture. Drawing from mainstream and subcultural youth movements from the past and present, Edwards looks at the way audio and visual content is used to manipulate an audience and disseminate information.
Working between video, audio, sculpture, performance and print, Edwards explores subcultures, tracing their paths and examining the wider socio-economic environments that give rise to them, exposing their failures and flaws and uncovering lost spiritualities and hidden positive potential.
This live lecture coincides with Edwards’ solo exhibition Wheel of the Year – ! Effluent Profundel Zone ! which is showing in Bonington Gallery until Friday 16 February 2018. A new commission for Bonington Gallery, this immersive installation considers the inescapable cycles of waste and decay, a by-product of all our consumption, personal or material.
The exhibition explores how these ecologies overlap at different scales – from the futile pursuit of personal purification and ‘clean living’, to the increasingly rapid turnover of cultural ‘content’ in the media and popular consciousness, to the wider perspective of the waste which is polluting our oceans, and threatening our very existence.
Ruth Angel Edwards is a Nottingham born multimedia artist based in London. Her recent exhibitions include: Enema Salvatore! Almanac, Turin, 2017; Light Deception / The Great Imitator, Auto Italia South East, London, 2017; solo exhibition at Arcadia Missa, London, 2016; Info Pura, The Residence Gallery, London 2016; Derivatives and Futures, Human Resources, Los Angeles, 2016; A British Art Show, MEYOHAS, New York, 2015.