Join us on the penultimate day of Jason Evans’ curated exhibition You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat for an informal and open discussion between Evans and Bonington Gallery curator, Tom Godfrey.
Hear more about the objects and works on show and the stories and histories that informed their selection.
All welcome – no prior booking required.
Soft drinks and snacks will be provided.
Image: Clark Brothers, Manchester (est. 1934), Selection of promotional materials (background); Jason Evans, Wool and Clay, 2017, Rug and eroded brick (foreground)
CURATED BY COLLECTIVE ÇUKURCUMA
Throughout centuries, libraries have been perceived as places where knowledge on life and space is organized, 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
This project is being run in collaboration with Queer Art Projects (London, UK), Nottingham Trent University’s Bonington Gallery, Primary, Bromley House Library, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, and Five Leaves Bookshop.
All the events associated with this series can be watched via this link
Talk: Islam in the River of Wisdoms, with Prof. Wendy Shaw
Date: Wednesday 3 October, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Location: Five Leaves Bookshop
This talk was recorded, you can access the footage on Vimeo.
Talk: A Feeling of Loss: Mutterzunge, with Adnan Yildiz
Date: Wednesday 10 October, 6 pm – 8 pm
Location: Primary
Bookings: Please visit Primary’s website for details
This talk was recorded, you can access the footage on Vimeo
Film Screening: Gürcan Keltek’s Colony (2015)
Date: Wednesday 17 October, 6 pm – 8 pm
Location: Bonington Lecture Theatre (room 143)
Bookings: please email cuneyt.cakirlar@ntu.ac.uk to reserve your place
View the trailer on Vimeo
Uplefter: A workshop on Political Depression with Aylin Kuryel
Date: Monday 22 October, 6 pm – 8 pm
Location: Bonington 146
Bookings: please email cuneyt.cakirlar@ntu.ac.uk to reserve your place
This talk was recorded, you can access the footage on Vimeo
Exhibition Walkthrough with Mine Kaplangı and Cüneyt Çakırlar
Date: Wednesday 24 October, 1 pm – 3 pm
Location: Bonington Gallery
Bookings: please email cuneyt.cakirlar@ntu.ac.uk to reserve your place
Film Screening: Shevaun Mizrahi’s Distant Constellation (2017)
Date: Wednesday 24 October, 6 pm – 8 pm
Location: Bonington Lecture Theatre (room 143)
Bookings: please email cuneyt.cakirlar@ntu.ac.uk to reserve your place
View the trailer on Vimeo
Istanbul Queer Art Collective
Performance
Visiting Bibliophiles: Fellowship of Books
Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergül will visit NTU Emeritus Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies, Gregory Woods. Presenting their Just in Bookcase, they will have a conversation on book loving, personal libraries, queer archiving and memory. This is a closed performance, the video documentation of this event is available on Vimeo.
Public programme curator: Dr Cüneyt Çakırlar, Senior Lecturer in Communication, Culture and Media at Nottingham Trent University. The events in this public programme are sponsored by School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University.
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to host, in collaboration with New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary, this guest lecture by Keith Piper, BA (Hons) Fine Art alumnus and founding member of the BLK Art Group.
This event coincides with an exhibition of Keith’s work at New Art Exchange, Unearthing the Banker’s Bones, which opens from Friday 31 March to Sunday 2 July 2017. It also coincides with the current group exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, The Place is Here, which is open until Sunday 30 April.
Keith Piper (born in Malta, 1960) is a leading contemporary British artist, curator, critic and academic. Piper was a founder member of the ground breaking BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students who exhibited together throughout the country between 1982-83. Their work was noted for its boldly political stance and critique on the state of intercommunal, class and gender relations the UK.
Adopting a research-driven approach and using a variety of media, Piper’s work over the past 30 years has ranged from painting, photography and installation through to use of digital media, video and computer based interactivity.
Image: Keith Piper, Unearthing the Banker’s Bones, 2016, film still. A 70th anniversary commission for the Arts Council with Bluecoat and Iniva. © the artist
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to invite Alan Michael to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.
(b.1967 Paisley, Scotland) Alan lives and works in London. His work combines existing styles and codes of painting, photography and text to highlight tensions between displays of labour and casual under-performance. While making allusions to an unresolved relationship between photorealism, Pop and the ‘realness’ of street photography, his works often refer to various processes used to generate the ideas, circuits of reception and, ultimately, the finished works themselves.
Alan is currently exhibiting in a group exhibition entitled All Men By Nature Desire To Know, which is on at Bonington Gallery until Friday 17 February 2017.
Recent solo exhibitions include:
Recent group exhibitions include:
The Fine Art Live Lecture Series is an initiative by Nottingham Trent University’s Fine Art course, whereby creative practitioners are invited to deliver a lecture to current students. The lectures are also open to staff, alumni and the general public.
The lectures take place during term-time only.
Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to invite Audrey Reynolds to speak as part of the 2017 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.
Audrey is an artist and writer, her work includes sculpture, painting, text, film and spoken-word audio. She studied at Bath College of Art and at Chelsea College of Art, London.
Audrey is currently exhibiting in a group exhibition entitled All Men By Nature Desire To Know, which is on at Bonington Gallery until Friday 17 February 2017.
Solo exhibitions include:
Group exhibitions include:
A collection of her writing will be published by AkermanDaly in Spring 2017.
The Fine Art Live Lecture Series is an initiative by Nottingham Trent University’s Fine Art course, whereby creative practitioners are invited to deliver a lecture to current students. The lectures are also open to staff, alumni and the general public.
The lectures take place during term-time only.
Krísis: critical interventions is a one-day symposium that brings the international network of artistic practices and narratives from the Krísis exhibition and public programme into a day of talks, presentations and performative lectures.
It provides an opportunity for artists, curators, academics and the general public – both local and international – to engage in dialogue; reflecting on the complex topography of Nottingham and the UK, the relationship to the art world and how socio-political issues are addressed in both Nottingham and in international contexts.
Presenters include the international artists involved in Krísis, Nottingham-based activists on refugees and female genital mutilation issues, guest speakers, and Nottingham Trent University lecturers and researchers from the School of Art & Design and School of Arts and Humanities.
Participants will explore the exhibition themes and the artists’ responses and practices which encourage the debate on art as a transformational tool for research on contemporary societal matters.
Krísis: critical interventions is chaired by Professor Duncan Higgins, (NTU School of Art & Design), Dr Roy Smith (NTU School of Arts and Humanities) and Dr Anna Ball (NTU School of Arts and Humanities) in partnership with the curators from Something Human, and Nottingham Contemporary.
This event is part of the public programme in association with the exhibition Krísis. Curated by Something Human and presented in partnership with Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham Contemporary.
Download your copy of the programme (pdf)
Image credit: Sama Alshaibi, Al-Tariqah (The path), 2014 Courtesy of the artist and Ayyam Gallery
Please join us this Thursday evening for a conversation between our current exhibitor Karol Radziszewski and Bonington Gallery Director Tom Godfrey. The conversation will cover a range of topics but remain centred on the tragic situation in Ukraine – the neighbouring country to Poland, Karol’s country of birth and where he is based. Karol will offer insight and perspective unique to where he is situated and his broad network (LGBTQ+ and beyond) of friends and collaborators who are currently gravely affected – either taking cover in Ukraine or seeking refuge elsewhere.
Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.
Join award winning filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman for a screening of Art Class (2020, 49 minutes) followed by a Q&A with Andrea, led by members of the NMG associate cohort, supported by LUX Nottingham.
Art Class is a filmed performance lecture playing on, and exploring, the perennial tension between the two key words in its title. It uses the tropes of scholarly presentation and personal confession alongside extracts from the artist’s work, guest interventions, martial arts and meditation exercises and evidentiary found material. The sequence tests the limits of access that working-class artists have to cultural production and to the relevant institutions circulating these outcomes. Alternately playful and provocative, serious and satirical, Art Class favors wit over weaponizing and reflection over rhetoric but does not pull its punches when it comes to the real obstructions to working class creative progress, or to the strategies necessary to overcome such outmoded hindrances.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Access: There is full level leading to access and seating space in the auditorium. Art Class will be screened with subtitles. The screening and Q&A will take place in person and a recording will be made available online after the event.
Andrea Luka Zimmerman is a Jarman Award winning artist, filmmaker and cultural activist whose work focuses on aspects of working class experience, and that of people living on the margins of society, that are seldom seen or discussed.
Films include the Artangel-produced Here for Life (2019), which received its world premiere in the Cineasti Del Presente international competition of the Locarno Film Festival (winning a Special Mention), Erase and Forget (2017), premiering at the Berlin Film Festival (nominated for the Original Documentary Award), Estate, a Reverie (2015) (nominated for Best Newcomer at the Grierson awards) and Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013), written and voiced by the late John Berger.
Selected exhibitions include ‘Art Class’ at METAL and LUX, ‘Shelter in Place’ at Estuary Festival, ‘Civil Rites’, the London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, ‘Common Ground’ at Spike Island, Bristol and ‘Real Estates’ at Peer Gallery. Andrea co-founded the cultural collectives Fugitive Images and Vision Machine (collaborators on Academy Award® nominated feature documentary ‘The Look of Silence’).
This event is part of the NMG Development Programme (2021 – 2022). The project will include an expansive programme of free discussions, workshops and activities centred around NMG associates and available to the general public. This event has been supported by Bonington Gallery.
Take a look at the film credits
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
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.