NTU Festival: The Push and the Pull
18th February – 1st March
Opening Nights: Tuesday 18th and Tuesday 25th February 6-8pm
This February sees the return of the annual Surface collaboration with Nottingham Trent University with the 14th NTU Festival: The Push and the Pull.
Following the success of last year's festival, The Island, this year's selected Fine Art students will use a critical and reflective approach to curate group exhibitions in response to the festival's theme The Push and the Pull by exploring ideas such as closeness and distance, belonging and not belonging, the pull of childhood nostalgia and push of adult expectations.
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
Tension Precious Time
Indigo Gow / Zofia Skindzier / Holly White
Exhibition dates: 19th- 22nd February, Main Gallery
Opening Night: Tuesday 18th February, 6-8pm
Precious Time is an immersive exploration of the push and the pull between memory and the present moment, expressed through photography, video, sculpture and installation. Our habit as human beings to romanticise the past causes us to rush through the present, creating a perpetual cycle of longing. The exhibition reflects personal and collective tethers with the past while simultaneously grounding audiences in the now.
Knotts of Tension
Amber Clarke / Tilly Wattam
Exhibition dates: 19th- 22nd February, Project Space
Opening Night: Tuesday 18th February, 6-8pm
Knotts tighten. Threads fray. The weight of expectation pulls one way, the force of chance pushes another. Knotts of Tension stretches across the space like an unresolved question spiralling through the mind. woven from conflict, pulled taut with longing. Threads tangle, fabric strains, sculptural forms distort under the unseen forces of pressure. To step inside is to feel the weight of identity, the tension of belonging, the chaos of being caught between past and future.
Week Two
Tethered Transitions
Rose Dias / Charlotte Gee / Nikola Liwora
Exhibition dates: 26th- 1st March, Main Gallery
Opening Nights: Tuesday 25th February, 6-8pm
Step into a world caught between then and now, where childhood memories tangle with the weight of growing up. Crochet webs stretch like lifelines, holding onto fragments of the past, while pools of shifting slime slip through your fingers—uncertain, ungraspable. In this space, play and responsibility collide, innocence lingers, and time pulls in opposing directions. Tethered Transitions invites you to navigate the push and pull of becoming, where every step forward tugs at the threads of what came before.
Tension
Samuel Basham / Xin Chen / He Jiang
Exhibition dates: 26th- 1st March, Project Space
Opening Night: Tuesday 25th February, 6-8pm
Tension is jointly curated by three multimedia artists. The exhibition features sculpture, painting, installation, and video, and explores the tensions and connections between artist and audience, colour and medium, and the push/pull dynamics of time, creation, imagination, and reality.
Artist Talk: Saturday 1st March, 2pm
The NTU Festival: The Push and the Pull 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