Commissioned by New Art Exchange and supported by Primary, Does Anybody Leave Heaven? by Ibrahim Ahmed is a commentary on the mythology of the US as a place of desire and opportunity, particularly amongst young men living in Cairo who are unable to travel outside of Egypt.
September - October 2019
Read MoreA public artwork, created by Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad in collaboration with local residents, responding to the question 'What is Lentonness?' at a time when the neighbourhood has undergone significant changes.
April - September 2019
Read MoreA collaborative project between artist Chiara Dellerba and children at Edna G Olds Academy to design a public mural in a newly developed area of Lenton.
July 2019 - present
Read MorePrimary presents Dividednation, a solo exhibition by Larry Achiampong which layers video, installation, performance, sculpture, and text-works - the most comprehensive exhibition of Achiampong’s work in the UK to date.
April - June 2019
Read MoreA project led by Nottingham Black Archive and Primary to document the experiences of members of the Windrush generation, and their descendants, who worked for Raleigh Industries.
May 2019 - present
Read MoreA new solo exhibition by Hardeep Pandhal which confronts post-colonial traumas with testing humour, taking place across both Primary and New Art Exchange.
January - March 2019
Read MorePrimary are delighted to host Emma Smith’s 5Hz in the first stage of touring project with HOME and Wysing Arts Centre. 5Hz is a sound installation centred around the invention of a new singing language which can be learnt in 15 minutes.
November 2018 - February 2019
Read MorePrimary is pleased to present PII, a solo exhibition by Parker Ito.
September - November 2018
Read MoreBased on Beth Collar’s archive of collected footage from around Europe, Cloaked Output Vol 2: Spirals of Focus strings together a thread of white patriarchal power, represented in public sculptures.
June - August 2018
Read MoreAlia Pathan brings their solo exhibition Fire Rooster to Nottingham. Artworks in the exhibition comprise opera, video and 4D Sculpture inspired by the artist’s actual and imagined journeys ‘home’.
May - June 2018
Read MoreAn expansive new body of work by Melanie Jackson, exploring milk’s predilection to be polymorphic - issuing as liquid, solid, powdered, vaporous, semisolid, and crystalline.
April - July 2018
Read MoreThe Commoners’ Fair is a day-long event that celebrates the idea of ‘the Commons’ - the shared resources that are available to all of us, and what that means to our urban communities in the here and now. It’s one outcome of Ian Nesbitt’s Ek-uh-nom-iks commission that took place as part of Primary's Intersections programme throughout 2016.
Read MoreThe fourth Intersections commission saw Ian Nesbitt take as his starting point time-banking and sharing economy networks based in Nottingham. The Ek-uh-nom-iks project developed through a series of conversations and workshops exploring what we share in local communities, and culminated in ‘The Commoners Fair’: day of talks, conversation, performance, food and workshops exploring ideas of alternative economies and the sharing of knowledge within a community.
Read MoreEmma Smith's Intersections commission in Nottingham responded to stories about working songs and whistles from local factories that have permeated the streets – looking at whistling, humming and song in relation to labour, agency and expression. Emma invited local residents to share experiences and practices of music making at work and in protest, working together to research the history of whistling, humming, clicking, singing and ditties from the local neighbourhood. The project resulted in the composition of a communal score that was performed by a Whistling Orchestra.
Read MoreFor the second Intersections commission, Primary invited the ‘...And Beyond Institute for Future Research’ to temporarily base its operations in the city of Nottingham. The ‘...And Beyond Institute for Future Research’ is a peripatetic, performative think tank led by artist Sonya Dyer, which positions women as progenitors of a future Space Programme. The ‘...And Beyond Institute for Future Research’ uses the model of the think tank as artistic proposition, engaged with the practice of research as a public act and creating visions of possible futures.
Read MoreFor the first Intersections commission, artists and hairdressers Richard Houguez and Rachael Young researched independent hairdressers in Radford and Lenton – finding out about the way these spaces function and exploring the qualities of relationships between hairdressers and their clients.
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