8 June - 17 August 2024
The exhibition will initially comprise three existing works by artists Ashley Holmes, Jasleen Kaur, and Jala Wahid, before it is transformed. Framed by a series of live events (e.g., readings, performance, screenings or discussions) the artists will return to the artworks presented in the exhibition and withdraw, change or replace them, allowing us to better witness the connections made between the works inhabiting Primary.
Read MoreApril - May 2024
The Kitchen Network delves into the politics of food as entertainment, exploring how it's become detached from the realities of its production and its role in climate collapse. Unfolding as the final reality TV food competition on Earth, this performance piece uses humour to examine the divide between online food cultures and their disconnection to wider issues of class, gender, and geography.
Read MoreApril - May 2024
Join us this Spring as Nourishment: a cyclical programme takes over Gallery One for a month – creating space for workshops, meals, events and film screenings. From broken global systems and climate breakdown to localised community responses and projects, this long-term cyclical programme delves into food justice, nourishment, growing and regenerative practices. Nourishment invites artists, activists, cooks, community organisers, gardeners, and local people to come together through a seasonal programme – creating space for imagining and implementing different food systems.
Read More22 July - 23 August 2024
Work in Common is an annual short residency series that encourages artists to experiment with different ways of working – either testing out a speculative idea or developing new collaborations. New Art Exchange Open 2023 prize winner Madi Acharya-Baskerville will undertake a 4-week residency this Summer. Madi works predominantly with pre-existing materials which have been discarded. She has become increasing concerned by the effect of obsolete matter in our environment.
Read MoreMarch – August 2024
Oneiric Kitchen is a collaborative project by Japanese artist-filmmaker Chiemi Shimada and London-based wellbeing practitioner Susie Cunningham. The project explores our relationship with sleep and addresses issues surrounding it. Developed through therapeutic cooking workshops in the UK and Japan and facilitated by project partners Primary (Nottingham) and Documentary Dream Center (Tokyo) the project aims to create a safe space for participants to reflect on their sleep experiences.
Read More1 March - 30 March 2024
Each Begets Each is a collaborative exhibition of new work by Khaya Job and Wingshan Smith. Together, they delve into realms of friendship, myth-making, play, rituals, conversations and sound to weave a tapestry of interconnected experiences. By interrogating and performing archetypes of femininity, the pair engage in the audacious task of imagining a divinity for themselves to create new possibilities for identity and community.
Read More26 January - 17 February 2024
A Material Romance presents new work by Will Harvey with text contribution by Jana Dardouk as part of To & Fro. Will and Jana took the opportunity of connecting to critique the pace of mass consumption by confronting the consequences of its waste and debris. Both artists work within the common ground of art and architecture, their practices seek to challenge our cultural perspectives of ‘waste’.
Read MoreThis Autumn, the Nourishment programme returns, with a focus on food cultures and stories, collective meals as spaces for conversation, and care for people and land as a foundation for healthy food.
Read MoreThe Materials Store provides a space to facilitate material reuse, reducing the disposal of materials after their initial use has expired. Designed by Primary residents Will Harvey and Jacob Kelly, the structure aims to employ circular economic thinking as a model that is restorative and regenerative by design, through shifting perspectives on waste thus reducing pollution by keeping products and materials in use.
Read More8 July - 2 September 2023
The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle Cartoon is an installation of large-scale figurative collage by artist Sam Keogh. These intricate works on paper draw heavily from The Hunt of the Unicorn, a series of seven tapestries made in Flanders at the turn of the 16th century and now housed in The Met Cloisters, New York.
8 - 29 July 2023
As part of Primary’s reopening season, we will host a ‘Residents Series’, a programme of events and activity showcasing and platforming work by Primary’s resident and member community which includes over 60 artists, makers, musicians, curators, and creatives at all stages in their careers, working across all media.
Launching 23 August 2023
After two years of regular creative play sessions, Build Create Play has developed to create a public artwork for the new playground. The artwork is being designed by artist Ismail Khokon through a series of creative workshops with local children – exploring what play means to them and the materials, shapes and colours that spark their imaginations.
28 August – 24 September 2023
Work in Common is a series of short residencies that encourage artists to experiment with different ways of working – either testing out a speculative idea or developing new collaborations. Each artist will use the spaces at Primary to produce and present work to the public, through screenings, rehearsals, performances, workshops, and meals.
7 October - 9 December 2023
A new multi-media installation featuring two experimental films. THE WALL is a surreal and absurdist take on housing inequality and its psychological effects. Hyperopia is a psychedelic two channel video installation which uses script, disorientating film and editing techniques.
7 October - 9 December 2023
In Courses for Dis-Course(s), artist Roo Dhissou conjures up a space, for dining, eating, cooking and gathering that manifest in a sort of kitchen, dining room, café, restaurant, chill space. The project includes a series of exhibitions and dining events for British South Asian artists that will take place at GLOAM in Sheffield and Primary in Nottingham.
26 January - 30 March 2024
Sonya Dyer’s work intertwines speculative fiction, hard science and mythologies to propose new ways of conceiving where the centre is located in fictional narratives of the future. In this project, hard science meets science fiction, with the Ready Room providing space for cells to relax, strategize and entertain. Recalling HeLa’s dubious genesis, the exhibition contemplates alternate forms of building society – what if the HeLa cells have found a better way to live? HeLa cells were originally taken from the body of Henrietta Lacks, a young Black mother in the USA, and were the first human materials sent into space in 1960.
Primary plans to share an annual mapping of resident and member achievements that have taken place over a 12-month period. By bringing together and publishing our creative community's many successes we hope to better communicate with our audiences, partners and funders the ambitious work being created and shared locally, nationally and internationally.
Read MoreThe simple routine act of sharing stories while sharing a meal. In our 2022 Autumn season of Nourishment, artist Janhavi Sharma discussed with participants online how the archival material of food inspires her work.
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