Johan Sandborg, Pro Rector, Bergen Academy of Art and Design Norway; newly appointed Visiting Professor at Nottingham Trent University.
Duncan Higgins, Professor of Visual Art, Nottingham Trent University; Academic Chair, Bonington Gallery; Professor in Fine Art, Bergen Academy of Art and Design Norway.
To coincide with the opening of the Returns exhibition, we’re delighted to host the UK premier book launch of three new publications – In a Place Like This. Their focus, an on-going artistic research project, exploring both personal and historical traditions concerned with a relationship to the representation of violence.
In a Place Like This explores the echoes of places, people and the impact of terrible histories. The central question to the research is the difficulty we face when we try to communicate our most intimate experiences to others.
Sandborg and Higgins have focused on the language of imagery, what it may represent and how to make ideas and emotions visible. This exploration is neither an explanation nor a mystification; rather it attempts to propose visual discussions.
In a Place Like This is assembled as a montage, an interwoven idea, in an attempt to review a narrative within the spaces in which it is inscribed.
Read more about In a Place Like This
Returns formed part of an on-going collaboration between Nottingham Trent University and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU). Established in 2012, it developed out of an International Research Project titled Topographies of the Obsolete, set up by Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway; and focused on the disused ceramics factory in Stoke-on-Trent, Spode Works.
The aim of the research was to deepen and develop our understanding of the post-industrial landscape with specific reference to the industrial ruin. Through a series of residencies and workshops, a cross-disciplinary group of artists and researchers from a range of international art institutions set out to explore the socio-economic histories, industrial architecture and production remains of the former Spode Works. The results of the research were exhibited and published during the British Ceramics Biennial in September 2013 and Seconds, in the Lace Market Gallery in March 2014.
The exhibition at Bonington Gallery was the first showing of the newly generated outcomes, with a subsequent exhibition taking place at Sheffield Hallam SIA Gallery in Winter 2016. Each exhibition showed a new development from the work previously exhibited, demonstrating the progression of the research.
The exhibition brought together artistic research from NTU:
Andrew Brown, Joanne Lee, Danica Maier, Debra Swann, and Chloë Brown from SHU.
Recent fine art graduates who participated in the original Spode project were in residence during the exhibition, from NTU:
Ciaran Harrington, and Christine Stevens.
Throughout the Returns exhibition, researchers from the project led a series of discussion workshops. Each session was intended for a small group of invited speakers and participants who considered a specific area emerging from the concerns uncovered in Returns’ research through practice.
The discussions took the form of presentations, group conversations and practical activities. Their aim was to bring together professionals and practitioners to reflect upon three particular points of focus:
Digging through Dirt: Archaeology past, present, precious and unwanted
Wednesday 11 February, 1 pm – 2.15 pm
Artists will have your Ruin: Regeneration through the arts
Wednesday 18 February, 1 pm – 2.15 pm
Ruins of Craft: Lost art of making
Wednesday 25 February, 1 pm – 2.15 pm
Johan Sandborg, Pro Rector, Bergen Academy of Art and Design Norway; newly appointed Visiting Professor at Nottingham Trent University.
Duncan Higgins, Professor of Visual Art, Nottingham Trent University; Academic Chair, Bonington Gallery; Professor in Fine Art, Bergen Academy of Art and Design Norway.
To coincide with the opening of the Returns exhibition, we’re delighted to host the UK premier book launch of three new publications – In a Place Like This. Their focus, an on-going artistic research project, exploring both personal and historical traditions concerned with a relationship to the representation of violence.
In a Place Like This explores the echoes of places, people and the impact of terrible histories. The central question to the research is the difficulty we face when we try to communicate our most intimate experiences to others.
Sandborg and Higgins have focused on the language of imagery, what it may represent and how to make ideas and emotions visible. This exploration is neither an explanation nor a mystification; rather it attempts to propose visual discussions.
In a Place Like This is assembled as a montage, an interwoven idea, in an attempt to review a narrative within the spaces in which it is inscribed.
Read more about In a Place Like This
A continuing collaboration between artists exploring the industrial architecture and remnants of ceramics at the former Spode factory in Stoke-on-Trent will result in an exhibition of new work at Bonington Gallery.
Staff and alumni from Nottingham Trent University and Sheffield Hallam University have created new material for the Returns exhibition which will open in this month.
The partnership evolved from an international research project titled Topographies of the Obsolete which was set up by Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Norway in 2012/2013 at the disused Spode factory. The work for that project was exhibited and published during the world-famous British Ceramics Biennial in September 2013, and centred on the landscape of post-industry.
Art shown at the biennial included pieces using abandoned decorative ceramic transfers by Nottingham Trent University researcher Danica Maier. The transfers were produced in bulk in large stacks with which Danica worked, often making them into plinths or frames for themselves – blurring the boundary between what is the ‘artwork’ and what is the ‘frame’.
Danica said: “In my work two-dimensional and three-dimensional identities are combined together: a whole series of flat planes together unite into three-dimensional forms. A ‘flat’ decorative transfer, when stacked in multiple, creates a new three dimensional form in space. It is the continued development of these ideas that I am playing with in the Returns exhibition.”
Meanwhile her Nottingham Trent University colleague Andrew Brown led ‘sound walks’ around the disused factory in which participants walked through the site while listening to a specially-composed soundtrack, comprising contemporary recordings made in that environment and sounds from other times and places. He also exhibited video and installation works.
Returns develops themes and initiatives which started at the Spode factory by focusing on placing objects in a new context, developing site specific work as well as further work with performance and sound.
Andrew explained: “My design for each sound walk is informed by perspectives on the past, present and future of each site, and Bonington Gallery and its environs provide diverse material with which to work.”
In addition to artistic researchers Andrew and Danica, fellow Nottingham Trent researchers exhibiting will include Debra Swann and Joanne Lee, with recent Fine Art graduates Ciaran Harrington and Christine Stevens, both participants in the original Spode project, being artists in residence for the duration of the exhibition. From Sheffield Hallam University, Chloë Brown will be exhibiting.
Following Returns, a subsequent exhibition will be taking place at Sheffield Hallam SIA Gallery in winter 2016. Each exhibition will be a new development from the work previously exhibited, demonstrating the progression of the research.
Returns will show at Bonington Gallery from Thursday 12 February to Wednesday 4 March, Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm.