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NTU Festival: Future Imperfect
23rd – 5th March 2022
Opening Nights: Tuesday 22nd February and Tuesday 1st March, 6-8pm

This February sees the return of the annual Surface collaboration with Nottingham Trent University with the eleventh NTU Festival: Future Imperfect. 

Following the success of last year’s online NTU Festival: What If…?, this year’s selected Fine Art students return to the physical spaces within the gallery. Using a critical and reflective approach to curate group exhibitions in response to the festival’s title, these students consider how recent events impacted on our interactions with others, our perceptions of interior and exterior space, and our sense of place and belonging. Future Imperfect responds with alternative visions of the future, reimagining 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. Two exhibitions will run concurrently in each week of the festival. 

Week One
I Moved to England
Andreea Pislaru / Klara Szafrańska
Exhibition: 23rd – 26th February, Main Gallery
Opening Night: Tuesday 22nd February, 6-8pm

Are you coming back?
No. Imagine if everyone left; it would be empty.

Two CEE artists cut open their sense of belonging and look for the new Future Imperfect.

If Not Today, Maybe Tomorrow
Jimmi Darbyshire / Catarina Ludovico / James Mellor
Exhibition: 23rd – 26th February, Project Space
Opening Night: Tuesday 22nd February, 6-8pm

We believe that our future existence will depend on our rapidly advancing technology, increasingly influenced by the social and political issues of the here and now. Through a mixture of practices, painting, photography, and sculpture, we will explore flaws and limitations of the modern world and the reality of our uncertain future; interrogate why and how we do what we do. We hope that our audience understands and relates to our work on a personal level — potentially even imagining a future for themselves. 

Week Two
Tide of Materialism
Fraser Miller / Tom Mortlock-Jackson
Exhibition: 2nd – 5th March, Main Gallery
Opening Night: Tuesday 1st March, 6-8pm

Tide of Materialism confronts and questions our relationship with the material world and how this affects the world at large. These artists interrogate the creation of object dependency, a relationship with the past founded on nostalgia, and how the direction of current affairs determines the future.

Benches Between Us
Jodie Calladine / Eleanor Ephgrave / Maggie Li
Exhibition: 2nd – 5th March, Project Space
Opening Night: Tuesday 1st March, 6-8pm

Living in softened separation between interior and exterior, Benches Between Us invites you to reconsider this simple structure that became precious to the nation’s social life. The unlikely sofa for your evening’s relaxation, or dining table for your evening meal? The bench’s new identity leads us to question how our movement outdoors and interaction with its furniture will change in the future. Through mediums of video, sound, painting and drawing, an immersive communal environment is constructed for your escape.

Artist Talks: Saturday 5th March, 2pm

Free Entry: Everyone Welcome

Opening Hours:
Opening Nights: Tuesday 22nd February and Tuesday 1st March, 6-8pm
Tuesday to Friday: 12:00-18:00
Saturday: 11:00-17:00

Surface
16 Southwell Road, Nottingham, NG1 1DL
Email: info@surfacegallery.org
Website: www.surfacegallery.org

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