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Contemporary
Visual Arts Network
East Midlands

CVAN EM celebrates and supports arts and culture in the region, fostering an inclusive long-term future for the sector, emphasising equity and access for all arts workers.

Contemporary
Visual Arts Network
East Midlands

CVAN EM celebrates and supports arts and culture in the region, fostering an inclusive long-term future for the sector, emphasising equity and access for all arts workers.

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Meet the Artist: Nisa Khan

Meet the Artist: Nisa Khan

Better Together #3: Gallery Climate Coalition

Better Together #3: Gallery Climate Coalition

Better Together #2: How do we achieve best practice when capacity is a constant challenge?

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View and Add Events and Exhibitions

Exhibition

Unseen Treasures of The Portland Collection

25th March 2023 – 31st December 2025

Harley Gallery, Nottinghamshire

Exhibition

Xylophobia: Online

22nd April 2023 – 21st April 2024

Fermynwoods, Northants

Event

Slow Reading Group: Down To Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime

15th May 2023 – 18th December 2023

Nottingham Contemporary, Nottinghamshire

Exhibition

Bears! Nature, Culture and Beyond

8th July 2023 – 31st December 2023

Lakeside, Nottinghamshire

Exhibition

Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now

15th September 2023 – 28th January 2024

Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicestershire

Exhibition

22nd September 2023 – 5th January 2024

Level Centre, Derbyshire

Exhibition

Ridykeulous (Nicole Eisenman & A.L. Steiner, with Sam Roeck): Ridykes’ Cavern of Fine Inverted Wines and Deviant Videos

23rd September 2023 – 7th January 2024

Nottingham Contemporary, Nottinghamshire

Exhibition

Reimag(in)ing the Victorians

23rd September 2023 – 7th January 2024

Lakeside, Nottinghamshire

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We are delighted to welcome new Steering Group ...

We are delighted to welcome new Steering Group member Mandeep Dhadialla to CVAN EM! Steering Group members act as advisors and advocates who use their knowledges, experience, and skills to inform and champion CVAN EM’s work. Our Steering Group is dynamic and diverse, passionate about the arts and active within the creative sector in the region.

Mandeep (mandeepdhadialla_printmaker) is a fine art printmaker specialising in plant forms and landscape using combined print processes, drawing and bookmaking to explore concepts of place and home. Her visual and thinking practice is influenced by spending her formative years in Kenya and migrating to England in her teens. Her current long term artist practice examines care of place of the natural world by telling the story of how people and landscape are in an interconnected cyclical exchange, through the idea of nurturing – with focus on the natural environment, human wellbeing and sense of community.

Alongside teaching printmaking and bookmaking workshops, Mandeep delivers socially engaged projects with ArtReach and completed an NPO funded artist commission by Leicester Museum and Galleries in response to Abbey Pumping Station and the Environment – the large scale linocut reproductions were exhibited at Highcross Leicester and featured in No Jobs in the Arts zine. Her practice has also featured in Art Etcetera magazine, A Seasonal Way, Stylist Magazine, and was in conversation with Ruth Singer’s the Making Meaning Podcast.

She regularly exhibits her original prints nationally and internationally for a number of years. Key exhibitions & awards include Sock Gallery 2023, 2022 & 2019 (Prize Winner, Highly Commended & Runner Up), Society of Women Artists Exhibition 2021, Teeside Print Prize 2020 (Commended) and Circle Foundation for the Arts Kenya 2020 (Honourable Mention).

Mandeep is a member of ArtCan and Leicester Print Workshop, where she teaches and of Leicester Society of Artists.

ID: Mandeep is at the right of the frame, she is looking down at a print and is positioned behind a large print press. Artworks are on the wall behind her.

cvaneastmidlands

Meet the Artist is back for a limited run, which ...

Meet the Artist is back for a limited run, which will see CVAN EM platform work by an artist from each county in the East Midlands.

This month we interviewed Derbyshire-based Nisa Khan (nisakhanart), a critically acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, published writer and researcher. Khan is the recipient of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 award. As part of the award her work Have you been sat there plucking your fanny hair? has toured Firstsite, Colchester and South London Gallery. Khan holds an MA (Distinction) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, where her work The Browns Head Out of Town was shown at Tate Britain’s: Late at Tate (2020). Khan’s work from rags to bitches to riches: Sir Ochterlony & His Bibi’s and Nazarana: nuffin is free as part of Saatchi Gallery’s London Grads Now. 21 exhibition.

Have you been sat there plucking your fanny hair? (2018); Flux (2019) Ones to Watch, Sunny Bank Mills. Installation view and material changes; Brown on Brown (still) (2021). Multi-channel video with sound; Undress me with your eyes… (2023) exhibition view, GLOAM Gallery, Sheffield. Photo Thomas Griffiths.

All images are courtesy of Nisa Khan.

ID: 1) facing away from camera a women wearing a white headscarf with a pink and purple flower design exhaled cigarette smoke; 2) a rusted steel tray with a paisley (boteh or buto) shape suspended on 3 small pillars. On the shape is a formation of pink/peach Himalayan salt blocks; 3) a collage of film stills depicting sensual scenes between a male and female protagonist; 4) An Indian/Pakistani/Punjabi craft heritage doll dressed in gold and red is reclined in a large yellow cushion, in the background a doll is seated in an armchair, in-front of pink drapes.

#NisaKhan #MeetTheArtist #EastMidlandsArtist #DerbyArtist #DerbyshireArtist

cvaneastmidlands

Book now for Better Together #3: Gallery Climate ...

Book now for Better Together #3: Gallery Climate Coalition, taking place online from 1-2pm on Tuesday 12 December. Link in bio.

For Better Together #3: Gallery Climate Coalition will begin with an introductory presentation to the work of galleryclimatecoalition aimed at engaging participants in topics about our collective role in tackling climate emergency, with a particular focus on the role of non-profit spaces of all sizes. GCC will also provide an introduction to and demo of their Carbon Calculator, answering questions and taking feedback on its application and utility. The session will also focus on how to create a culture of climate consciousness, how to build and implement a decarbonisation action plan, and the role of local ‘green teams’ to support this work.

Bi-monthly Better Together sessions take place online and offer an opportunity for change makers in the East Midlands, UK to connect. We particularly encourage attendance from directors and programme leads and welcome participants to share with the group current challenges that their organisation is facing, helping establish a supportive space for shared learning and development. Sessions will last only 1-hour and proritise time for open discussion. Each session will be framed by a different urgent topic that is relevant to both the region and wider sector.

GCC is an environmental charity and international coalition of over 1000 arts organisations working to create an environmentally responsible art world through knowledge sharing, community building, campaigning and advocacy. Our key target is to reduce the visual art sector’s CO2e emissions by a minimum of 50% and achieve near-zero waste by 2030. As a registered charity, GCC does not operate for profit and provides our membership, tools and resources free of charge.

Image: Climate Crisis >> Art Action, a two-day symposium hosted by Gallery Climate Coalition and Whitechapel Gallery.

ID: 5 individuals in conversation sat on a stage, behind them is a large blue curtain and a projected slide that reads ‘Local Crisis & Local Action’.

#BetterTogether #Unlimited #BestPractice #EastMids

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💻🚀CVAN EM’s Arts Worker Directory is ...

💻🚀CVAN EM’s Arts Worker Directory is growing! The Directory is an easy to use resource for searching independents, freelancers and small businesses working within the arts across the East Midlands. 🔗 in bio to access, search & populate the Directory!

Developed by CVAN EM, the Arts Worker Directory provides a platform that helps organisations, projects and collaborators to connect with arts workers in the region. The Directory can be freely populated by arts workers of varying professions and working across the region.

Arts Worker Directory is facilitated by CVAN EM and was developed with artfund support through their Reimagine grants programme. Website design by simaostudio.

ID: Background image of a technical fitting fixings to a framed artwork with 3 blocks of white rectangular shapes stacked in the foreground. Text on blocks reads ‘Arts Worker Directory’.

#ArtsWorkerDirectory #ArtsWorkers #EastMids #ArtsEastMids #Freelance cvanetwork arttechspace