Join us for the launch of the first exhibition of the academic year, a two-person exhibition by William English and Sandra Cross bringing together film, photography, sculpture, sound, and archival material formed independently and collaboratively over several decades.
To Farse All Things offers a rare opportunity to explore the intertwined lives and practices of two artists whose work resists categorisation. Through a shared and uncompromising commitment to experimentation, hospitality, and social engagement, English and Cross have cultivated a body of work that is as generous as it is radical.
As part of the 28th instalment of the Bonington Vitrines series, we’re delighted to present Someone’s Doing Something, a project by London-based curatorial, research, and archival platform Gestures, developed in dialogue with writer Isabelle Bucklow.
Enjoy a free welcome drink, delicious food (first come, first served!) and music.
All welcome but reserve your free ticket to avoid disappointment.
For the 28th instalment of the Bonington Vitrines series, we’re delighted to present Someone’s Doing Something, a project by London based curatorial, research and archival platform Gestures, developed in dialogue with writer Isabelle Bucklow.
This project, featuring artists such as Stuart Sherman, Simon Moretti, and Yvonne Rainer, will present a selection of work that explores gesture as a form of artistic expression. Whilst some gestures are recorded through notation or residue, others survive only in documentation or retelling.
The works in Someone’s Doing Something reflect a broad range of these approaches, from the formal to the informal, the scripted to the instinctive, and considers these against shifting times and contexts.
In considering the location of the Bonington Vitrines, as a space that is moved through by 100’s of people each day going about their daily business, this quote by theatre director Peter Brook is considered:
“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” – Peter Brook.
Gestures is a London based curatorial, research and archival platform that has organised exhibitions, interventions and projects in locations as diverse as sidewalks in New York and Travelodge hotel rooms, as well as exhibition spaces such as the Postal Museum in London and 47 Bedford Street in London.
Gestures is currently conducting long term research into Situation, a space in London that existed in the 1970s that did early exhibitions with artists including On Kawara, Bruce McLean and Bas Jan Ader.
Along with colleagues WC2E9HA, The Everyday Press aka Bunker Basement and Whatever Anderson, Gestures will open the shared exhibition space Chequers in Summer 2025.
Image credit: Stuart Sherman, The Twelfth Spectacle (Language), photo by Nathaniel Tileston, 1980, as included in The Stuart Sherman Papers, 2025.
Join multidisciplinary artist and illustrator Arianna Tinulla Milesi for this free, two-day workshop in response to our current Bonington Vitrines exhibition Nottingham Subcultural Fashion in the 1980s.
We’re delighted to welcome Arianna, who is currently in residence at NTU on the AA2A programme, to run this public workshop. Through her ongoing project This room has no walls anymore, just endless trees Arianna creates shared spaces through the act of drawing – making opportunity for discussion and the sharing of knowledge, storytelling, materials and skills.
Responding to themes in our Vitrines exhibition, Arianna will explore relationships between fashion, devotional and ritual orientated contexts. You don’t need to have skills in sewing or making and we’ll provide all the materials – though you are invited to bring along an item of clothing to work with on day two if you’d like to.
On day one of the workshop, Arianna will introduce you to some of the key themes in her work. You’ll use these as prompts, encouraging you to share your own experience of ritual, participation in groups, and subcultures – or to simply share your personal responses to the exhibition. The aim is to create a communal and safe space to hold these different types of experience precious.
Day two of the workshop will be more practical and hands-on. You’re invited to customise an item of clothing, channelling some of the thinking from the first day – what clothes communicate, re-interpreting the purpose of clothing, rituals, and ideas of belonging.
About the artist: Arianna Tinulla Milesi
Arianna Tinulla Milesi is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator based in the UK. Drawing is the core of her work, not only as a practice but also as a cognitive tool to understand reality and create. Coping mechanisms, devotional art, seaweeds, the formation of memories and syncretism are pivotal points in her research, which is open and interactive.
Arianna is a member of the Council of the Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA). She collaborates with art institutions all over the world and is devoting an increasing amount of time to the organisation of workshops oriented to nature, to make wearable art, to convey human connections and mental health.
Bonington Connects
Bonington Connects is a series of talks, discussions and workshops planned by Nottingham Trent University students, inviting people to engage in thought-provoking conversations in response to the Gallery’s exhibition programme. It aims to create an accessible atmosphere, encouraging exploration of the exhibitions in an informal, open and engaging setting. This workshop has been planned and organised by final-year MFA Fine Art student, Vidhi Jangra.
We are pleased to acknowledge that funds from NTU TILT have supported this event.
We are delighted to be dedicating the final Vitrines instalment of our 2024/25 season to archive material, information and clothing that documents the dynamism of the independent fashion scene of Nottingham in the 1980s.
In the years following Beeston-born Sir Paul Smith’s ascendency from a 3x3m store on Byard Lane in 1974 – to bases in London, Paris and Tokyo – many local fashion brands were established, including several by graduates from ‘Trent Poly’, who bucked the moving-to-London trend by committing themselves to the city and starting a new generation of independent labels. Homegrown brands such as G Force, Olto, Vaughan & Franks, Katsu and Cocky’s Shed were a just a few…
These brands combined talent, style discernment, DIY attitudes and cheap rents to start labels, open shops, and form global influence and connection. At one point the city even gained its own style pages in the form of Déspatch, Relay and Débris magazines, providing content as broad ranging as fashion editorial featuring local and international designers, montages of nights at The Garage, and signposting visitors to the shops and studios that were physically and ideologically a long way from the High Street.
The fashion scene that developed placed equal importance on both studio and social time, building a network of close-knit creatives who collaborated and supported one another. This community incapsulated many of the same qualities that gave rise to other significant, and perhaps more well-known cultural communities such as the city’s music, cinema and contemporary art scenes.
The aim of this presentation is to celebrate and help establish a legacy for this important period within the city’s [sub]cultural history. An open call for materials will run in the lead-up and during the exhibition, allowing anyone to submit related materials that will join the exhibition and evolving noticeboard.
Accompanying the exhibition is a suite of specially commissioned essays by independent scholar Ian Trowell. Ian has also provided curatorial consultancy and research to this project, having interviewed several of the key protagonists of that era. Ian writes on subjects including UK subcultures, music, fashion, popular culture, art and media. His book Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent was published by Intellect Books in 2023.
This exhibition has been co-curated with Dr Katherine Townsend, a researcher, educator, practitioner and Professor in Fashion and Textile Practice in the Fashion, Textiles and Knitwear department in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University.
Ian Trowell’s essays
Press
Image: ‘Clockwork Orange’ collection by Olto (now One-BC). Photo by Paul Edmondson, circa 1984.
As part of our current Vitrines exhibition, Art [School] Histories, we have been collecting materials from former Nottingham School of Art and Design students and staff that reflect the more candid and informal moments during their time here. Below are a selection of these submissions – see the full set on the specially constructed noticeboard next to the Vitrines, just outside the gallery entrance.
With thanks to Claire Simpson, Daisy Hayward, Diana Pasek-Atkinson, Lis Evans, Rebecca Efstatiou, Alex Jovcic-Sas, and Giorgio Sadotti. If you have any images or memories you’d like to submit, please email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk
To accompany The Art Schools of the East Midlands exhibition in our Gallery by John Beck and Matthew Cornford, our Vitrines and Foyer will feature historical materials relating to the history of Nottingham School of Art & Design.
The School was first established in 1843, and counts painter Dame Laura Knight, Desperate Dan creator Dudley D. Watkins, BAFTA nominated director Jonathan Glazer, comedian Matt Berry and visual artist Hetain Patel amongst its notable alumni.
Come along to discover photographs, artefacts, aural histories, press cuttings and more from the art school’s rich 180-year history. Uncover some of the lesser known histories, and hear memories from those who worked and studied here over the years.
This exhibition has been assisted by Researcher & Assistant Curator: Lee Chih Han, Art Museum and Gallery Studies placement from University of Leicester.
Photographs by Jules Lister
Come along to our launch night on Thursday 21 September, 6 pm – 8 pm for a first look round, alongside Art Schools of the East Midlands in the Gallery.
Join Alison, Marina, and Andrew in conversation, discussing materials they have found in their research on European periodicals post-1945. At the heart of the project is a focus upon the practice of translation:
The Spaces of Translation project studies a small collection of important literary and cultural magazines from three countries (Britain, France, Germany) in order to consider how they explore and construct notions of European identity in the period from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s. The current exhibition at the Bonington explores a number of these issues and displays a range of original magazines from 1945-65. Alison, Marina, and Andrew will discuss some of the fascinating material they have found in their research so far.
The event will be chaired by Dr Annalise Grice, Department of English, NTU.
Alison E. Martin is Professor of British Studies, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/Germersheim, Germany. She is a specialist in translation studies, travel writing and comparative literature. Her books include Nature Translated: Alexander von Humboldt’s Works in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2018) and Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England, 1783-1830 (2008), as well as two co-edited volumes, Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930 (2017) and Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750-1830 (2012). Before coming to JGU, she taught at the University of Reading, Universiteit Hasselt, the Universität Kassel and the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. She is the German PI for the Spaces of Translation project on European magazines, 1945-65.
Marina Popea is a Research Fellow on the Spaces of Translation project, based at NTU. She specialises in translation and cultural magazines with a broad comparative focus. A Latin Americanist with an interdisciplinary background, she is completing an AHRC-funded PhD at Oxford University on the role of translation in shaping modern poetics in Mexican magazines of the early twentieth century. She is particularly interested in Digital Humanities and the methodological challenges of studying translation in the context of periodical publications.
Andrew Thacker is Professor of Twentieth Century Literature at NTU. He is the author or editor of several books on modernism and modernist magazines, including the three volumes of The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines (2009-13) and, most recently, Modernism, Space and the City (2019). He was a founder member and the first Chair of the British Association for Modernist Studies. He is the UK PI for the Spaces of Translation project on European magazines, 1945-65.
This exhibition explores the rich history of Nottingham Women’s Centre and the fight for women’s rights in the city.
Starting life in a living room during the second wave of feminism in 1971, Nottingham Women’s Centre is one of the oldest organisations of its kind in the country. It was created to support women and fight for equal pay; education and job opportunities; an end to homophobic discrimination; and an end to violence against women – battles still being fought to this day.
Come along to see material from the Nottingham Women’s Library archives, protest placards from Reclaim the Night marches, and more.
Curated by Diana Ali.
Come along to our launch night on Friday 24 March, 6 pm – 8 pm for a first look round the exhibition, alongside Emily Andersen: Somewhere Else Entirely in the Gallery. There will be free food from 6 pm and a performance from the United Voices Choir at 7 pm.
In the aftermath of World War II, hundreds of new journals emerged across Europe. This explosion of print was a reaction to the years of privation and lack of cultural contact between nations. It also responded to public discussion about what might now constitute a ‘European’ identity – an issue central to processes of reconstruction and reconciliation in the post-war period.
Translations were an important component of many journals. They introduced readers to foreign movements, concepts and writers, increasing awareness of cultural similarities and differences and forged alliances across national borders. This exhibition brings together a number of these magazines and highlights the overlooked and mostly unacknowledged translators.
The translators who worked for these journals are remarkable individuals. Some had been ‘silenced’ by censorship in the interwar period. Many were refugees, displaced by war, who used their knowledge of foreign languages to gain a foothold in a post-war world. All were talented figures, passionately committed to the transnational circulation of ideas. They understood that dialogue across cultural, political and linguistic divides was an essential precondition for peace and prosperity in Europe.
This exhibition has been curated by Alison E. Martin, JGU Mainz/Germersheim, Germany and Andrew Thacker, Nottingham Trent University.
Accompanying Stephen Willats’ exhibition Social Resource for Tennis Clubs in the Gallery, we are pleased to dedicate our Vitrines to Control Magazine – the pioneering journal that Stephen founded in 1965, and continues to publish and edit to this day.
Control Magazine’s focus has always been to provide a resource for artists to discuss their work and, in particular, to make connections with other disciplines including social or computer sciences and technology. Across 21 issues, the magazine has published work and writing by over 150 artists, including John Latham, Roy Ascot, Anthony Benjamin, Dan Graham, Mary Kelly, Helen Chadwick, Tony Cragg, Dennis Adams, Lawrence Weiner, Anish Kapoor, Martha Rosler and Jeremy Deller.
In this presentation we’re displaying issues 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 which cover the period of time that Stephen lived and worked in Nottingham, producing such projects as Man from the Twenty First Century (1971) and Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs (1971/2).
Alongside this Vitrines exhibition, we are also delighted to display two new acquisitions to Nottingham Trent University’s art collection. Firstly Art Cognition Manifesto (1969) that Stephen produced and printed here in the Bonington Building and was distributed to various art schools around the country. This continued a tradition of manifesto writing that Stephen had begun in the early 1960s that attempted to shape the thinking of the art community.
The second is The Telephone Conversation, 1974. Although produced 1 – 2 years after Stephen left Nottingham, this interactive work involves several people associated with NTU and was very much informed by the ideas Stephen had been exploring in the city. The work concerns the relativity of people’s perceptions of each other, and the interactive worksheet allows the viewer/participant to construct a model of the situation that reflects their own experience, beliefs and behaviours. Stephen recently stated that his work in the 1970s all came from this singular piece.
Image: Control Magazine Issues 13 and 17, Stephen Willats
