Exhibition walk through at the Nottingham Contemporary

Today, November 16th, we took a trip down to the Nottingham Contemporary to look through their 4 galleries that are full of works, that are either contemporary or traditional.

The Contemporary organises four to five major exhibitions a year, bringing the work of the world’s contemporary artists to Nottingham. The ideas raised by the exhibitions are explored in educational programmes for all ages.

Each piece of work differs with a unique range of materials and media’s that have been used, such as paints, oils, metals or even digital.

To me, I feel like each exhibition is an insight to what the artists mindset could have been and what they could have been thinking about. And their mood reflects onto the viewer in hopes that they will feel it too, for example, an exhibition with a dark setting and theme with dark colours can reflect a sad and empty, yet liminal feeling. Whereas brighter colours could represent the opposite; a more energetic feel.

When we first stepped into the first part of the exhibition, my first impression had set me up for the rest of the exhibition, as I thought that it was wonderful as all works had their own story with each of its unique set of details, from the large to small and basic to detailed works.

(Inferno, Caragh Thuring, Oil on linen, 2018)

Each and every gallery space throughout the Contemporary has a mix of traditional works and contemporary works (more modern techniques), and for each, I found a piece that I really liked.

For traditional I found NOUM, The Sleeper from the Depths, from the Illuminations series, 1962 created by Hamed Abdella. Which was created with silver, aluminium, tar and oil paints on a board to create thick layers with a shine. Even if this work seems more contemporary than traditional, as this work used modern ways to create a historic piece, however, it is still traditional as it is essentially a painting in a frame on the wall.

‘Egyptian artist Hamed Abdalla (1917-85) had a lifelong interest in what he called the "silent darkness" of caves. As a young man, he explored caves across Egypt, and while living in France during the 1950s often visited the grottos in the Vercors region. The geological forms he encountered resonated with his own artistic experiments. He began to conceive of painting as a kind of fossilisation, sedimentation or crystallisation.’

But I found the contemporary piece more interesting, created by Matt Copson, called Death, Again, it is a 9 minute cycle of lights in a certain sequence that creates the vision of dragonflies flying around a slowly turning skull that eventually distorts and becomes solid again.

I like this piece because it is the polar opposite of traditional, as traditional pieces are usually made from paints, as well as it’s vibrant colours and height that make it stand out more than the rest.

Anything created looking like this can be seen as art, but Death, Again is seen as art to show how simple it can be as art is interpreted differently to each of its viewers. Whereas, for example, a simple statue could be seen as art to some people, but not to others.

Created between the 13th and 14th Century by an unknown maker, this statue is called 'Nottingham Green Glazed Salt Figurine.'

'A well-preserved piece of earthenware in the Nottingham Light-bodied Green Glaze tradition. This form of glazing was particularly common in the early to mid-14th century. This figure is missing its arms, which possibly held a basket.'

Matt Copson (b.1992) uses computer-generated laser projections, hand-drawn animation, murals, sculpture and music to explore life and death. He works with a cast of characters, including birds, skulls, babies and the recurring figure of a sly fox. As Copson has said: "I think of my laser works as cave drawings. They are a continuation of and reconnection to our beginnings, and to our need to process the world in crude form. To illuminate the darkness with magic."