NTU Festival: What If…?
15th March – 10th April 2021
Opens 6pm
Week One
It’s a Doll’s World
Thomas Cobbett / Rosie Ghale-Soltani /
Anna Hodgson / Abi Richardson /
Megan Winslade
Exhibition: 15th – 20th March
Opens 6pm
It’s a doll’s world: performing our function in our blocked off rooms
Shrink into our materials and traverse the boundaries of physical and cyber space
Five artists offer a virtual tour around their practice made miniature
Each subverting the mundane in offer of the potential new
As we adapt to the shrunken landscapes of our interior --
What If we found ourselves inside this redesigned functionality?
Week Two
ObjectIF
Klara Szafrańska / Janhavi Sharma
Exhibition: 22nd – 27th
Opens 6pm
ObjectIF is an uninterrupted 168 hour long live streamed video challenging the materiality and conditioning of story-telling in the virtual world that blurs the lines between the real, projected, and perceived narratives. The performance will utilise the virtual space not merely as a medium to exhibit, but as an active participant of the piece that transforms and manipulates information, giving the viewers the experience of altered reality.
Could we use the virtual to distort the physical or just its experience?
What happens when the virtual stimulates a physical reaction, and the physical expects virtual company?
Do imposed distortions dramatise the act of performing?
This March sees the return of the annual Surface collaboration with Nottingham Trent University with the ninth NTU Festival: What If…? Following the cancellation of last year’s NTU Festival due to the national lockdown, this year’s festival, What If…?, will see a series of online exhibitions that explore the infinite possibilities of the digital universe. This year's selected Fine Art students will be using a critical and reflective approach to curate group exhibitions in response to the festival's title and to recent events by exploring concepts such as alternative visions of the future, and propositions for how we might live and work together in a post-Covid world.
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. Four exhibitions will run concurrently throughout the festival.
Week Three
Transfiguration
Keira Hancock / Kasey Renaghan / Zoe Weston
Exhibition: 29th March – 3rd
Opens 6pm
Transfiguration process commences.
The moment when nature evolves a different set of principles. Three artists collectively see the familiar in an unfamiliar way. We invite you to look at the world with fresh eyes.
Week Four
a m b i g u i t y
Lucy Hepke / Matt Saunders
Exhibition: 5th – 10th April
Opens 6pm
The world has shifted from the Familiar to the Unfamiliar
transformed meanings and new associations
becoming so much more or so much less............
a m b i g u i t y is a web-based installation that overwhelms in its uncertainty and non-linearity — exploring the capabilities of the digital to re-write and overrule reality
Come have a taste of how good it feels to not understand
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