Flat
Primary
PREVIEW: 12 September 2025, 6–9PM
EXHIBITION: 13 September – 29 November 2025
OPENING TIMES: Thursday–Saturday, 10AM–6PM, or by appointment.
WHERE: Gallery 1 and Gallery 2
Flat is an exhibition that is like two sides of the same coin.
Through material play and creative research, the show will feature work by Primary resident and member artists—Louisa Chambers, Craig Fisher, Lynn Fulton and Sam Metz—across Gallery 1 and 2, exploring the word ‘flat’ in two distinct contexts.
On one side of the coin, the works interpret ‘flatness’ from multiple vantage points, particularly in relation to spatial perception. Be it the collapsing, flattening, and reconstruction of sculptural form or the smoothness of a surface. In the 1960s and 1970s, art criticism referred to flatness as the smoothness and absence of curvature or surface detail in two-dimensional artwork, particularly modernist painting. American artist Donald Judd’s ‘Specific Objects’ (1964 text) is interesting to bring into the fold, using the exhibition to put into contention what Judd wrote in Arts Yearbook: ‘Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another’.
If flatness is on one side, on the other side, the project will test and materially play with the idea of the word ‘flat’ in another sense: a form of housing. The term ‘flat’ originates from the Old Scottish/Old English word ‘flet’, which means an interior space of a home. Some believe the term has persisted because most flats are located on a single floor, meaning there are no stairs inside the accommodation. The concept of a flat is deeply rooted in British housing tradition, starting with mansion flats in 1800s London, flats rebuilt after the interwar period, council estates—Nottingham was one of the largest builders of council housing in the country until the 1970s—and housing for the working-class that’s historically affordable, and included communal areas. However, with the rise of studentification in Radford (where Primary is based) and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the word ‘flat’ and the socio-politics of being a ‘resident’ in some form of dwelling, be it a studio or a home, could take on new meaning.
Primary is then thinking further to how arts organisations are borderlands—bridges between civic space and urban renewal/planning, and how the art institution and public artwork can sit (un)comfortably in between, like Konsthall C (initiated in 2004, a year before our organisation), a cross between all three, located in a former communal laundry in Hökarängen, Sweden; and then us, housed in a former school (c. 1885 until 2005) that became occupied by artists—becoming Primary.
Flat is a dialogue between Primary’s Artist Development Programme and Public Programme.
Artist Biographies:
Since graduating with a MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2007), Louisa Chambers has established a studio-based practice with an enquiry into expanded Painting.
Louisa has been developing a body of work that incorporates a simple folded form. These folded shapes are recorded from observation becoming an abstracted still life. Appropriated patterns from walls, fences, and floors are translated onto architectural paper and transfigured into temporary three-dimensional structures. She is interested in the patterned tessellations that are on the surface and when manipulated create other spaces, angles, and areas of illusion. The scenes and shapes that feature tilt back and forth between abstraction and figuration. The transient quality often used as the medium in the paintings mirror that of the temporal nature of the folded paper shapes that are recorded in the paintings. The forms can be simply squashed down and reconstructed again. These works are part of an on-going research into depiction and visual perception on two and three-dimensional surfaces.
Craig Fisher makes large-scale sculptural installations using various fabrics/materials that question representations of violence and disaster. While the individual details of the installations Fisher makes may reference the latest in avant-garde design, the overall impression is that you are being transported by your TV to the latest media disaster - or is it a film set? - Kill Bill meets South Park, The Shining via The Wizard of Oz and then back again through Bowling for Columbine! Fisher creates an aftermath of multiple popular references. Familiarity, confused by representational play, recedes, leaving a nightmarish playground of soft-edged things to consider. The theatricality of the paintings/installations Fisher makes allows the viewer to engage in a narrative interplay; the sense of saturation at play in the work makes it easy to miss the horror due to the seductive nature and materiality of the artwork.
Lynn Fulton has exhibited extensively in this country and abroad. She studied BA (Hons) at Bath Academy of Art 1984-87, and after some time involved in artist-led organisations in Manchester and London, went on to study at The Slade for the sculpture MFA, which she completed in 1997. She was awarded a Boise travel scholarship in 1999 and spent three months in New York; some of this work was exhibited at Pierogi 2000 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Lynn has participated in Art OMI, Upstate New York, Braziers and Shave Farm artist residencies. She has shown in Surround with Nadine De Koenigswater, Gasworks, London (1995); The Whitechapel Open, London (1996), OPEM 3, The Collection, Lincoln (2014); In Miniature Small Collections, Nottingham Contemporary (2015); Shed, Mrs Rick’s, Primary (2015); Creekside Open, APT London 2019 (prizewinner); Yellow Moving Edge, with Sophie Mackfall, One Thoresby Street (2019), Royal Academy Summer Show, London (2021) and the Exeter open (2024). She was awarded an Abbey fellowship at the British School at Rome 2023/24.
Sam Metz’s work tries to capture what an unpredictable body is and how a disabled body’s very presence transgresses societal restrictions. Working with movement, as a disabled performer who has Tourette’s and is neurodivergent, short performances are an intrinsic part of their visual art, which are then made ‘solid’, poeticising the fleeting interruptions of the disabled body by making lasting documentations through drawing as-stimming, film, animation and sculptural installation (choreographic objects). Sculptural works (choreographic objects) capture the ranges of movements of the performer. Drawn works demonstrate the repetitive self-soothing actions of stimming (neurodivergent behaviour) through mark-making. Sam’s work seeks to legitimise non-verbal communication and alternative body-based communication and to invite others to participate in this creative play.
Access:
Flat will be partly located on our ground-floor gallery space, which has full, level access from our main entrance on Seely Road. However, there is no step-free access to our first-floor gallery space. Any films in Gallery 2 will be available to watch on a monitor in the Reading Room.
If you would like to make a group booking or visit our exhibitions at a quiet time, please get in touch with us at admin@weareprimary.org or 0115 924 4493 to arrange.
Large print, braille, and easy-read versions of the exhibition text will be available at our Reception; please ask our Front of House Assistant for details. Check back on this page for an audio version of the exhibition text.
You can find further access information on our website’s Visit Us page and via AccessAble.
Please email admin@weareprimary.org or call 0115 924 4493 with any access inquiries.
