“Hello, My Name is Paul Smith”

May 2021 to February 2022, (the new) Nottingham Castle

After securing a new position as Exhibitions Manager to work on the inaugural temporary exhibition programme, I worked with Paul Smith HQ and the Design Museum to stage an exhibition that reveals Paul Smith’s intuitive take on design, alongside his understanding of the roles of designer and retailer, which have laid the foundations for lasting success. It offers visitors a unique insight into the magnificent mind of the Nottingham-born fashion icon.

Made up of over 1,500 objects which span the British designer’s vast career, the exhibition focuses on a series of key themes and objects that have defined the history of Paul Smith.

£30m HLF-funded renovation of Nottingham Castle

2019-2021

As a break from my curatorial duties, I was tasked as Project and Technical Manager for the movement and packing of over 30,000 objects, artefacts and artworks (an entire museum) into a new purpose built off-site storage facility complex.

I also led a technical team for the installation of the new collection displays, working alongside base-build contractors (BECK), case builders (CLICK Netherfield), and designers (CASSON MANN) - all during COVID-19 lockdown(s), negotiating the complexities of a global pandemic, whilst also managing an international exhibition tour (see below).

Lost in Lace: Nottingham Lace & Lacemaking

January 2020 to April 2021
Ningbo Museum, and Nanjing National Museum of Textiles, China

The exhibition drew 263 individual pieces from a Designated collection that reflects a broad survey of the advancements, skill, ingenuity and creativity of the lacemakers and designers who once inhabited Nottingham, but also showing that Nottingham Museums has one of the most important lace collections in the world.
As soon as Covid-19 lockdown was announced, the collection was held at Heathrow Airport and was prevented from travelling to China. However, with a bit of patience, alot of trust and entrepreneurship, I eventually Project Managed an international museum tour without leaving British soil.

A British Museum Spotlight Loan: The Golden Age of Satire? Late-Georgian Satirical Prints

27 July to 6 October 2019, Newstead Abbey

Within this Spotlight Loan, Newstead Abbey presented nine late-Georgian prints from the British Museum’s collection. The prints cruelly mocked King George III and his dissolute sons in the period 1790–1820. This time is often referred to as the ‘golden age’ of satire and the prints on display are by the most talented, prolific and vicious satirists from that time, including Gillray, Cruikshank, Rowlandson and Newton. Many of the prints featured in the British Museum’s major 2018 Citi exhibition I object: Ian Hislop’s search for dissent.

Lace Unveiled  

 10 March 2018 to 22 April 2018, Newstead Abbey

Artists: Joana Vasconcelos, Joy Buttress & Manolis Papastavrou, Shane Waltener,and Lucy Brown

Lace Unveiled presented work by contemporary artists inspired by lace displayed within the rooms of Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of the Romantic Poet Lord Byron. These were shown alongside objects from the world-class Nottingham City Museums & Galleries Lace Collection.

Works include Bragança and Mestre de Avis by Lisbon-based Joana Vasconcelos, a video commission by artist Joy Buttress and designer Manolis Papastavrou, new installations by Shane Waltener in the house and grounds, and the secrets we keep from ourselves by textiles artist Lucy Brown in Lord Byron’s former Dressing Room.

The Lace Unveiled exhibition was part of Lace Unravelled, a season of events that celebrated Nottingham City Museums and Galleries’ world-class lace collection and Nottingham’s machine-made lace heritage.  Lace Unravelled was made possible thanks to Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund and The Grand Tour.

I spent a very enjoyable week in the freezing sub-temperatures beneath the Yews with Shane Waltener (who was on stilts) as his assistant whilst he installed his work amongst the trees next to Monks Stew Pond. You can visit this installation virtually in the video here. Although cold, there was so much peace and calm in that spot. A very memorable experience.

The Object is Alive: Matthew Darbyshire

28 January – 14 May 2017, Nottingham Castle

The Object is Alive has invited British artist Matthew Darbyshire to develop a new exhibition that actively engages with Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, and is influenced by the work of Polish artist and theatre maker Tadeusz Kantor, who was interested in the role and status of the object.  Matthew has reimagined 12 objects from Nottingham Castle’s collections – including 20th century studio pottery, modernist sculpture and even a grenade from the Regimental Museum. By playing with scale and devising new materials and techniques, including experimenting with different concrete formulas, he has created a series of new works exclusively for the Castle.

The Nottingham Castle Open (2009-16)

Lead Producer and curator of The Nottingham Castle Open.
 
For more than 100 years Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery has played host to an ‘open-style’ exhibition, an event which celebrates the enormous creative talent within the region.

The Nottingham Castle Open was one of the busiest and most exciting events in the Castle’s Annual calendar, and before it ended, the largest Midlands Art Prize to include the West Midlands.

At its height, it attracted over 2,000 submissions per year, had over £15,000 worth of exhibition prizes and opportunities for artists, and was one of the first nationally to offer a free entry online submission portal.

PH Emerson: Presented by the Author

21 November 2015 to 7 February 2016, Nottingham Castle

Peter Henry Emerson (b. Cuba 1856 – d. UK 1936) was one of the most pioneering photographers – and opinionated writers – of the late 19th century. His interests were eclectic, and included medicine, sports, genealogy, anthropology, and ornithology. Between 1881 and 1895 he devoted his life to photography and writing about rural life in East Anglia, particularly the Norfolk Broads. With works drawn from the V&A and the Castle’s own collections, this exhibition explores the artist’s modes of presenting his photographs to the public.

The exhibition is curated by Federica Chiocchetti as part of Nottingham Castle’s partnership with the V&A.

A World to Win: Posters of Protest & Revolution

21 November 2015 – 17 January 2016, Nottingham Castle Museum.

This exhibition looked at over a century of posters agitating for political change, drawn from the V&A collection. From the Suffragette campaign for the vote to the ongoing crisis in Syria, activists have used posters as a powerful means to mobilise, educate and organise. Making and displaying a poster is in itself a political, even sometimes a dangerous act. For many social and political movements poster production continues to be an important form of cultural output.

Cornish Light: The Nottingham 1894 Exhbition Revisitied

3 April – 7 June 2015, Nottingham Castle Museum

In September 1894 Nottingham Castle opened a Special Exhibition of Pictures by ‘CORNISH PAINTERS of NEWLYN, ST IVES, FALMOUTH, etc’. Consisting of over 200 paintings by 50 artists, the exhibition gave a comprehensive overview of a new wave in British art, sweeping in from what seemed at the time to be a remote, little-known area of the country. It aimed to bring together the very best paintings that Cornish artists had produced in the preceding 10 years: a commitment to contemporary art that continues to inform the exhibitions and acquisitions programme at the Museum & Art Gallery to this day.

The core of the 2015 exhibition reunites works that were originally shown at Nottingham in 1894 and reappraises this ground-breaking exhibition from the early years of the Castle Museum & Art Gallery for 21st century audiences.

Natasha Daintry: Ocean

3 April – 7 June 2015, Nottingham Castle

A major work by outstanding contemporary British ceramicist Natasha Daintry. One thousand slip-cast porcelain pots are cleverly arranged to form an ‘ocean’, exploring Daintry’s fascination with nature, water, movement and colour theory, and our emotional responses to colour and form. She says:‘Studying water has…encouraged me to cultivate my own tiny internal ocean, a kind of salty spirit-level, to help me find a position of equilibrium on life’s continuously shifting ground, minute by minute, second by second, pot by pot.’

John Plowman: A Life Drawing

31 January – 22 March 2015, Nottingham Castle Museum.

Drawing has been a constant element and driver for John Plowman’s art for over 30 years. Plowman originally trained as a sculptor and at the root of his drawings lies his interest in the connection between two and three dimensions, the ‘made’ and the ‘yet to be made’, and the way in which his work relates to spaces and objects in the world around us. John has researched and selected drawings from Nottingham Castle’s collection and will show these alongside his own drawings, selected from the late 1970s to the present day. This glimpse of the museum collection through the eyes of a contemporary artist and vice versa, creates new meanings, contexts and connections in the process.

Richard Slee: Work & Play

31 January – 22 March 2015, Nottingham Castle

The work of internationally-renowned ceramic artist Richard Slee challenges the conventions of ceramic art, through objects that bring together the domestic interior with a love for the ‘great indoors’. Including references to the decorative, ornamental and symbolic, from history and from within contemporary culture, Slee’s work explores new meanings and dramas. Increasingly he has incorporated non-ceramic materials and found objects in works, as well as other specialist media such as enamel on metal and hot glass.

Jeremy Deller Curates: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

1 February – 21 April 2014, Nottingham Castle

The effect of the Industrial Revolution on the British landscape and economy is well known but its impact on the consciousness and culture of the people is less clear. In All That is Solid Melts Into Air Jeremy Deller explores the roots of working class musical culture, from 19th century industrial folk to glam and heavy rock music in the 70s and 80s. The exhibition will combine contemporary works with a vast range of objects and images, from historical paintings depicting factories and forges to oppositional broadsheets, political tracts, poems and popular ballads against exploitation, including works by William Blake and William Morris.

Accompanied by an integrated programme of events, performances, discussions, talks and screenings, Deller approaches this wealth of material like a social cartographer tracing neglected ley lines of cultural history.

A Hayward Touring Exhibition.

Trent to Trenches: The People of Nottinghamshire & The Great War, 1914-18

25 July – 16 November 2014, Nottingham Castle.

A major exhibition to mark one hundred years since the outbreak of the Great War exploring the experiences of the people of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire at home and in the trenches.

Stories that are close to the hearts of local people – but whose impact reaches way beyond Nottinghamshire – are told through powerful visual images, museum artefacts, and poignant personal possessions, letters and original photographs, on loan from members of the public.
Organised by Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, and researched and made possible by a large team of volunteers, Trent to Trenches is part of the Imperial War Museum’s First World War Centenary Partnership.

Avi Gupta: Here is There

There Is Here presents new photographs by American artist Avi Gupta, commissioned by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art. The images depict domestic interiors, shot in Kolkata, India, where the artist’s family originated, and the Washington DC area, USA, where the artist was born. With subtle traces of daily routines and lived experiences, they hint at an absent human presence: the burnt out matches by the stove, the cap of a 7up bottle left unscrewed, the remnants of a prayer ceremony with a burning candle. The home can be many things; a private sanctuary, a community, an expression of identity. These interior scenes, populated with objects and images that mark our existence, speak of human experience and values in an ever-globalising world.
 

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts touring exhibition

MAKE BELIEVE: RE-IMAGINING HISTORY AND LANDSCAPE

20 July – 29 September 2013

Make Believe invited artists to respond to Nottingham Castle, both indoors and outside, with temporary artworks that trigger imagination and add new layers of ambiguity to this unique site and its rich history.

Nottingham Castle is a grand 17th century Ducal mansion built in the Palladian style, standing on the site of a mediaeval Castle, above a network of caves. Gutted by fire in 1831 during Reform Act protests, the building was remodelled in 1878 to become one of the first public art museums outside London. Traces of this history remain in the gardens and underground, and new elements have been added over the years: a Georgian door from another building appears in the grounds, apparently leading nowhere; manmade cladding seamlessly underpins some areas of the original Castle rock and the imposing gatehouse was reconstruced in the Edwardian period. On this site, fact and fiction literally collide; what is real and what has been imagined can be hard to detect - all is not what it seems.
 

According to Alfredo Cramerotti, "Truth can only be experienced", implying that what we receive second-hand as ‘fact’ has often been filtered through someone else’s perception. If so, can fiction lead us nearer to the truth, since it invites our imagination to conjure up our own personal experiences and associations?

Featuring artists: Wayne Burrows, Susan Collis, Mark Dixon, Alan Kane, Debbie Lawson, Jason Singh & Shane Waltener.

CHRISTINA MACKIE: THE JUDGES III

9 March –27 April 2013

New work commissioned for the collection, as a result of the Castle winning the Contemporary Art Society’s Annual Commission to Collect Award 2011.

Christina Mackie’s sculptural installations combine natural, manmade and crafted materials to create a complex web of associations. She accumulates objects, sketches, photographs and materials and lays them out in a carefully choreographed sequence, like a train of thought made visible. Subtle references to landscape are made with painting, in clay and also by including rocks and mineral specimens.

The Treasures of Nemi: Finds from the Sanctuary of Diana

20 July – 29 September 2013

The collection of excavated artefacts from the Temple of Diana at the Roman city of Nemi, 16 miles south east of Rome, forms one of the most important collections of antiquities held by Nottingham City Museums.

Lord Savile excavated the famous temple of Diana in 1885.  Half of his finds from this season were given to the Castle Museum in 1886, the other half becoming the property of the land owner Prince Orsini. . Several of the exhibits are internationally famous: The Fundilia Rufa herm, the Asklepios (former Zeus) bust, the model temple and the so-called Julius Caesar’s bust.

Lace Works: Contemporary Art & Nottingham Lace

10 November 2012 – 3 February 2013

Nottingham was once at the heart of the machine lace industry, exporting its lace technology and lace products all over the world.  

Lace Works taps in to this interest and brings together contemporary artists whose work reveals a continuing fascination with lace, one that goes beyond traditional associations of lace with lingerie, bridal wear and suburban window dressing.  From fine thread to heavy metal, the exhibition includes works by Lucy Brown, Joy Buttress, Nicola Donovan, Cal Lane, Timorous Beasties and Teresa Whitfield.

FLASHBACK: ANISH KAPOOR

19 November 2011 –  18 March 2012

A Hayward Touring exhibition in partnership with Manchester City Art Gallery, BALTIC, Nottingham Castle and Lisson Gallery London.

Flashback invited Anish Kapoor to revisit his earlier works in the Arts Council Collection and to use them as starting points for reflection on his subsequent practice. “Flashback is deliberately open; it does not demand the conventions of a chronological exhibition with its linear progression of an artist’s practice. Instead it invites the artist and the visitor to take a more unconventional path, one that leads backwards, forwards and sideways, on a journey that intensifies our current view through the presence of the past.”

BRITISH ART SHOW 7: In The Days of the Comet

23 October 2010 to 9 January 2011

Curated by Lisa LeFevre and Tom Morton
 
The 39 selected artists have been chosen on the grounds of their significant contribution to contemporary art in the last five years. All artworks included have been produced since 2005 and encompass sculpture, painting, installation, drawing, photography, film, video and performance, with many artists creating new works especially for the exhibition. British Art Show 7 will mark a change in direction from previous years, moving away from the model of a survey show to an exhibition with a marked curatorial focus.

A Stranger’s Window

20 March – 13 June 2010

Former artist-led gallery Moot (2005-2010) delved in to Nottingham Castle Museum’s vast and diverse art collection and worked with a number of different spaces within the Castle to give visitors a taste of the discoveries they have made.

Artists included: Sean Edwards, Tomas Chaffe, Robert Orchardson, Nicolas Deshayes, S Mark Gubb,  Simon Raven, Aline Bouvy & John Gills, Simon & Tom Bloor, Dan Ford, Mike Cooter, Ruth Proctor, Jack Strange, and Josie Flynn. 

NO VISIBLE MEANS OF ESCAPE; CONTEMPORARY ART & IMPRISONMENT

31 October – 10 January 2010

From as far back as 1068, Nottingham Castle was used to detain prisoners of war, incarcerate criminals or offenders, and imprison key historical figures in its dungeons. It therefore provides a compelling setting for No Visible Means of Escape, an exhibition exploring themes of control, surveillance and the psychology of imprisonment in contemporary art. Taking its name from Marc Quinn’s sculpture, the exhibition includes work by Darren Almond, Christine Borland, Louise Bourgeois, Dora Garcia, Tim Lee, Manu Luksch & Langlands and Bell.

Picturing Britain: Paul Sandby: A Bicentenary Exhibition

25 July – 18 October 2009

A major exhibition initiated and organised by Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, with the support of the University of Nottingham and Paul Mellon Centre. Touring from Nottingham to the National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Academy.

Paul Sandby (1731-1809) is a familiar artist whose achievement is yet to be fully recognized. This exhibition, originating in the artist’s city of birth, in the year of his bicentenary, will be the first to explore the range and influence of Sandby’s art in relation to the cultural world in which the artist lived and worked.