Viewing articles tagged with 'Nottingham'

Primary, 33 Seely Road, Nottingham, NG7 1NU, United Kingdom

Rebecca Lennon: LIQUID i

Installed in the generous space of the assembly hall of a former school building, the six-channel sound and three-channel video work lures the viewer into a cacophonic whirl of multiple layers and intertwining currents. The artwork induces a vertiginous split-attention effect—a poetic response to the present condition, which is often characterised by contemporary philosophers as liquid, ever changing and precarious in its instability. Review by Jaroslava Tomanova

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

Jimmy Robert: Akimbo

‘Akimbo’ is the largest presentation of Jimmy Robert’s work in the UK to date: a survey spanning nearly two decades of Robert’s video, collage, drawing and sculpture. ‘Akimbo’ aims to embody the action of its title (standing with hands on hips) as a defiant posture which converges works in new arrangements to create new conversations and fresh perspectives. Throughout his practice questions of intimacy and touch, and what it means to see and be seen are explored using the body as a vehicle for enquiry. Review by Joshua Lockwood-Moran

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Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden St, Nottingham NG1 4GG

Sophie Cundale: The Near Room

Sophie Cundale’s new film commission ‘The Near Room’ (2020) is an absurd psychological melodrama about loss and the aftermath. The film as a whole asks, but doesn’t answer the question of how we make sense of experiences in flux, like ecstasy or crisis. In unfathomable times, when death feels closer to life than ever, this film is an unsettling watch. Review by Andrew Price

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

Denzil Forrester: Itchin & Scratchin

Spanning the whole of Denzil Forrester’s career from ‘The Cave’ (1978) painted before the artist went to the Royal College of Art, up to works made in 2019 during a first trip to Jamaica, the movement and dynamism of Afro-Caribbean Dub-Reggae scenes with depictions of club nights, sound systems, house parties and Carnival remain the major subject of the work. Review by Piers Masterson

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New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Blvd, Nottingham NG7 6BE

Shezad Dawood: Encroachments

Shezad Dawood’s exhibition is overrun with multi-coloured terrazzo. The walls are plastered with garish speckles, which seep into paintings, prints, plinths and even the exhibition guide. The terrazzo, designed by Dawood, gives the display a Pop-y veneer, strengthened by visual allusions to Robert Rauschenberg’s collages and Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, as well as tributes to the arcade game, Space Invaders. Review by Julia Schouten

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New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham NG7 6BE

John Akomfrah: Mimesis: African Soldier

The opening titles to John Akomfrah’s ‘Mimesis: African Soldier’ (2018) state that “six million colonial subjects fought and served in the Great War” and that three-hundred and fifty-thousand died in Europe. Akomfrah’s three-screen installation interweaves archival footage with new material that commemorates those conscripted into the First World War by colonial powers, to fight for a cause not their own. Review by Joshua Lockwood-Moran

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

Lis Rhodes: Dissident Lines

“Write the first lines last”, says Lis Rhodes in a voiceover. “Ambiguous journeys have many beginnings”. In her films, which are socially diagnostic as much as they are aesthetically rich, Rhodes recognises one of the most important linguistic truths of our time. Hypocrisy is an echo, the same thing twice in two ways. Review by Adam Heardman

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham, NG1 2GB

Elizabeth Price: FELT TIP

Elizabeth Price’s solo show at Nottingham Contemporary brings together three new works. Each departs from a moment in late 20th century British history: a period marked by the collapse of the organized Left, the systematic dismantling of union power, and the programmatic reconstitution of the working class. Review by Hugh Nicholson

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Primary, 33 Seely Road Nottingham, NG7 1NU & New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham NG7 6BE

Hardeep Pandhal: Paranoid Picnic: The Phantom BAME

Nottingham galleries, New Art Exchange and Primary present ‘Paranoid Picnic: The Phantom BAME’, a split-site exhibition of recent and ongoing works by Hardeep Pandhal. A second generation British Sikh now based in Glasgow, Pandhal dissects continuing projects of cultural assimilation and the performance of heritage. Review by Amelia Seren Roberts

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance

‘Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance’ is the first act of an exhibition showing a kind of history of resistance through the means of feminisms and intersectional queer thinking. The curators started to build the exhibition as an idea two years ago. Then, we didn’t have #metoo and #timesup, Trump wasn’t yet the POTUS, women’s marches weren’t so much in the news ... Review by Gulnaz Can

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

From Ear to Ear to Eye: Sounds and Stories from Across the Arab World

‘From Ear to Ear to Eye: Sounds and Stories From Across the Arab World’ at Nottingham Contemporary explores sound, music and listening in the Arab world, revealing different layers of meaning, intertwined histories, complicated political situations and complex questions. This expansive exhibition spreads across six rooms and showcases works by almost 20 artists who work with sound, are musicians or explore oral stories. Review by Roma Piotrowska

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Bonington Building, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden St, Nottingham NG1 4GG, UK

Sara MacKillop: One Room Living

One Room Living presents a series of works and interactions that reference the wide variety of spatial uses that directly surround Bonington Gallery – analysing not only the gallery’s site and situation, but also how the wider institution’s function is represented across a multitude of spaces.

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Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham NG1 2GB

States of America

Nottingham Contemporary’s ‘States of America’ sweeps across the shifting social and political landscape of the USA between the 1960s and early 1990s, capturing the rise of popular culture and suburbia, declining city centres, the Civil Rights Movement, wealth disparity, urban life and the fading American Dream. Viewed through the lens of seventeen different photographers, we are offered a necessarily prismatic picture of American culture that is particularly compelling given current events. Review by Hannah Newell

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Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Bonington building, Dryden Street, Nottingham, UK, NG1 4GG

It’s Our Playground: Artificial Sensibility

A solo exhibition of new work by Paris-based artist duo It’s Our Playground (IOP), comprised of Camille Le Houezec and Jocelyn Villemont. Artificial Sensibility continues the duo’s ongoing reflection on artificial intelligence – when technology mimics human cognitive behaviour. Artificial Sensibility reveals a hybrid learning process of automated principles of recognition and basic human methods of education.

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