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.
Between 11 – 17 April 2014, Emma Cocker (Senior Lecturer in Fine Art), will be joined by artist Nikolaus Gansterer (Vienna) and choreographer Mariella Greil (Vienna), inhabiting Bonington Gallery as an experimental ‘method laboratory’ (entitled Beyond The Line) for staging an encounter between choreography, drawing and writing; between body, mark and text.
Beyond The Line is conceived as a pilot project in preparation for Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (2014 – 2016), a large-scale international, interdisciplinary collaboration involving Cocker, Gansterer and Greil for exploring the points of slippage as the practices of drawing, dance and writing enter into dialogue, overlap and collide. Through processes of reciprocal exchange, dialogue and negotiation between the key researchers, Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line will interrogate the interstitial processes, practices and knowledge(s) produced in the ‘deviation’ for example, from page to performance, from word to mark, from line to action, from modes of flat image making towards transformational embodied encounters. Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line is funded by FWF/PEEK art based research grant of Austria.
In this research seminar, Cocker, Gansterer and Greil will reflect and elaborate on their collaborative research, and introduce the key ideas and concerns of their forthcoming project, Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line.
This exhibition brought together a unique group of artists and designers who are members of a research group based at Cardiff School of Art & Design.
Led by Robert Pepperell, the participants were each interested in the way art and design can contribute to questions about human nature and experience, of the kind often asked by scientists and philosophers. How, for example, are we able to have visual knowledge of the world, and what does it look like? What is a body, and how does having one change the way we make and experience art? Are aesthetics properties features of an object, a person, a brain, a mobile body, a social context – or some combination of these?
Professor Robert Pepperell, Alise Piebalga, Robin Hawes, James Green, Craig Thomas, Theo Humphries, Chris de Selincourt
Please join us for a celebratory launch of two new publications:
Traci Kelly‘s ‘Seers-in-Residence’, with contributions from Emma Cocker, Simon Cross, Ben Judd and Joanne Lee (a Nottingham Trent University/Bonington Gallery publication)
‘This publication emerges from an invitation for four researchers to spend time as Seers-in-Residence with Traci Kelly’s monoprint installation ‘Feeling It For You (Perspective)’, which was part of From Where I Stand I Can See You in January 2013. The resulting book documents the creative and critical ideas explored by participants, and reflects upon the possibilities for this innovative model for research.’
Designed by Joff + Ollie
Joanne Lee‘s ‘Gumming up the Works’, Issue #3 from the Pam Flett Press independent serial
‘This third issue fantasizes about luminous constellations of dropped chewing gum on the street, confronts a horrible compulsion to seek out the hard stuff glued under desks or in the recesses of train carriages, before finding itself fixated upon various species of lumps, heaps and piles; ultimately the writing explores creative work as a sort of digestion or composting, and suggests we have quite a lot to learn from worms’
Designed by Dust
There will be drinks and nibbles in the Atrium, followed by a live vocal performance by Denise Boyd as we relocate to Bonington Lecture Theatre for introductions to the publications, and a series of short readings. Click here to join the events page on Facebook.
Drawing is said to have the ability to record both its own making and the movement of the thoughts and body of the drawer.
Bringing together the work of several artists with differing practices Drawology aimed to consider whether this premise is applicable to a specific process or genre of drawing or whether it is applicable to drawing generally.
The works in the exhibition represented an expanded field of contemporary drawing in a Fine Art context to include: works on paper, performance, moving image, installation, projections and three-dimensional drawings. The exhibition was part of a larger research project being undertaken by Deborah Harty entitled ‘Drawing is phenomenology’.
Shaun Belcher, Sian Bowen, Rachael Colley, David Connearn, Paul Fieldsend-Danks, Maryclare Foa, Paul Gough, Joe Graham, Deborah Harty, Claude Heath, humhyphenhum, Juliet MacDonald, Jordan McKenzie, Lucy O’Donnell, Bill Prosser, Karen Wallis, Martin Lewis, Patricia Cain, Simón Granell, humhyphenhumha, David Connearn, Andrew Pepper
During the exhibition, the gallery hosted several “in residence” sessions, based on Traci Kelly’s model for interactive research for From Where I Stand I Can See You.
Wednesday 27 November 10.30 am – 1.30 pm:
Professor Marsha Meskimmon, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History and Theory at Loughborough University
Wednesday 27 November 1 pm – 5 pm:
Danica Maier, Senior Lecturer Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University
Thursday 5 December 11 am – 2 pm & 3 pm – 5 pm:
Dr Kevin Love, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Social Theory at Nottingham Trent University
Alongside Drawology the Gallery also hosted a student-led exhibition challenging the notion of drawing in contemporary art.
This inaugural exhibition marked the launch of Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Architecture and Cultural Heritage of India, Arabia and the Maghreb.
ArCHIAM undertakes architectural, urban history and heritage related research and impact work for Architecture, Heritage and Global Difference, AHGD based at NTU – the umbrella centre for the humanities-based study of architecture, material culture and the built environment within a globalizing context.
ArCHIAM is an interdisciplinary forum which brings together a wide range of researchers interested in the study of the architecture of three interconnected global spheres. Cutting across traditional disciplinary boundaries, the Centre provides an exciting opportunity for the study of both historical and contemporary phenomena with an aim of developing theoretical positions but also though practice-based research.
The exhibition was designed and set up by the ArCHIAM Centre, and led by prof Bandyopadhyay.
October 2020 – September 2021
The Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and Bonington Gallery is pleased to present Formations, a year-long programme of events in response to Black History Month, Black Lives Matter, and the Decolonisation agenda.
NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre invites the public to enjoy a year of events which focus on Black History, Literature, Art, and Critical Thinking as central to global creative and intellectual work. The series begins in October 2020 with a month of events led by artists, writers, theorists and students which critically consider the place and impact of Black History Month. The subsequent yearlong programme is accompanied by commissioned work by artist Honey Williams, which will be launched at the end of October with a special event, and displayed in Bonington Gallery. Themed events running throughout the year are prompted by themes or objects and are centrally concerned with making visible the centrality of Black artists and thinkers, and the patterns and materials that connect global creative and intellectual histories.
The series is developed by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at NTU and directed by Dr Jenni Ramone and Dr Nicole Thiara.
Jenni Ramone is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies at NTU. Her recent book publications include Postcolonial Literatures in the Local Literary Marketplace: Located Reading, The Bloomsbury Introduction to Postcolonial Writing, Postcolonial Theories, and Salman Rushdie and Translation. Jenni Ramone specializes in global and postcolonial literatures and the literary marketplace. She is pursuing new projects on Global Literature and Gender, and on literature and maternity.
Nicole Thiara is Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Research Network Series Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature(2014-16) and On Page and on Stage: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts (2020-21). She teaches postcolonial and contemporary literature, and her areas of research are Dalit, Adivasi and diasporic South Asian literature.
October 2020
Formation: History — Critical Responses to Black History Month
November – December 2020
Formation: Land — Dispossession, Agriculture, Place
Formation: Memorials — The Place and Meaning of Memorials, Statues, and Renowned Figures
Formation: DNA — Identity, Care, Inequality, Disease, and Vaccination
Formation: Milk — Global Practices and Representations of Breastfeeding in Art and Literature
Conference: Patterns of Struggle and Solidarity
Formation: Lace — The Global History of Lace and its use in Colonial Contexts
Formation: Re-Viewing — A look back on the 2020-21 Formations Programme
In late November, we opened our doors to introduce the next exciting preview in our 2019/20 season of exhibitions – Motif. An experience bringing together 15 years of research conducted by our very own Tim Rundle, Principal Lecturer in BA (Hons) Fashion Communication and Promotion here at NTU.
After 30 years of aggressive shifts in design, our relationship to retail, consumption, personal and lifestyle narratives are unrecognisable. One of the key markers of these global changes is our adoption of motifs. The exhibition celebrates both badges of belonging and icons of individuality throughout society, charting shifts in consumer behaviour and popular culture over the decades.
Thanks to everyone who joined us on the preview evening, it was a fantastic atmosphere and a great way to celebrate incredible talent of our staff and researchers here at Nottingham Trent University.
oshua, our Assistant Curator went along to the Curators’ Day organised by the Arts Council Collection, in Leeds and Wakefield to see what Yorkshire Sculpture International had to offer.
The festival was produced by the Henry Moore Institute, The Hepworth Wakefield, Leeds Art Gallery and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and features work by international artists across the venues, as well as major new outdoor sculpture commissions across public spaces in Leeds and Wakefield. The festival reflected on the curatorial theme propositioned by Phyllida Barlow that ‘sculpture is the most anthropological of the art forms’.
As well as seeing the YSI festival, we had chance to see other exhibitions in the area, visiting The Art House, Longside Gallery, The Tetley and Index Festival.
Here are some photos of his highlights:
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.