NTU Festival: The Island
13th – 23rd March
Opening Nights: Tuesday 12th and Tuesday 19th March, 6-8pm
This March sees the return of the annual Surface collaboration with Nottingham Trent University with the 13th NTU Festival: The Island.
Following the success of last year's festival, Inside, Outside, Together, Apart, this year's selected Fine Art students will use a critical and reflective approach to curate group exhibitions in response to the festival's title by exploring the idea of The Island as a potent site of the imagination onto which we can project fantasies, aspirations, and possible futures. The Island is a physical space and an imaginary one, a place of utopian isolation that is both destination and point of departure for this year's selected artists.
The NTU Festival offers selected Fine Art students the opportunity to curate a group exhibition that establishes their practice outside of the university. Surface provides a supportive and professional environment for the students to plan and show their work. Two exhibitions will run concurrently in each week of the festival.
Week One
Truth or Trash
Amy Dipple / Gabriella Klitou / Hena Mistry / Chloe Preece / Ella Smart
Exhibition dates: 13th - 16th March, Main Gallery
Opening Night: Tuesday 12th March, 6-8pm
Truth or Trash explores the disjunction between commonly held perceptions of Great Britain and its contemporary reality through an immersive installation. The idealised perception of the NHS held by many outside the UK versus the crumbling underfunded actuality of our healthcare is just one example of the discrepancies exposed in the exhibition. Truth or Trash reveals the underlying reality of such erroneous perceptions through the use of moving images, projection, textiles, paintings, and sculpture.
Foraged From the Fleeting
Lucy Davies / Jessica Lewis / Rhianna Pierson / Kate Richardson
Exhibition dates: 13th - 16th March, Project Space
Opening Night: Tuesday 12th March, 6-8pm
Foraged from the Fleeting explores the act of gathering and focuses on an artist’s self-sufficient practice. Like gathering provisions on an island, as artists we collect material for our artistic journeys. Using both the ephemeral and the permanent we investigate the fleeting. Combining unconventional materials with traditional art practices, this exhibition highlights the mundane and overlooked.
Week Two
Wherever You May Wander
Vidhi Jangra / Nada Khartabil / Lucy Nelson
Exhibition dates: 20th - 23rd March, Main Gallery
Opening Nights: Tuesday 19th March, 6-8pm
“Is there something we have forgotten? Some precious thing we have lost, wandering in strange lands?” - Arna Bontemps.
Wherever You May Wander brings into focus current political upheaval and displacement across the world, exploring ideas around nationhood, sovereignty and lost female narratives. This exhibition navigates themes of loss, memory, hope and rebirth.
Fear Can’t Hold You Anymore than a Dream
Samuel Basham / Nate Rood
Exhibition dates: 20th- 23rd March, Project Space
Opening Night: Tuesday 19th March, 6-8pm
Our exhibition, Fear Can’t Hold You Anymore Than A Dream responds to the utopic idea of creating a new isolated society and what happens when that utopic idea runs off course. Fear Can’t Hold You Anymore Than A Dream will tell the story of a people, who sought to build a new society but descended into chaotic primitivism.
Artist Talks: Saturday 23rd March, 2pm-4pm
The NTU Festival: The Island opens in the Main Gallery and Project Space. As always, there will be a donations bar with ales from local brewery, Pheasantry.
Free Entry: Everyone Welcome