Nottingham Contemporary

I decided to venture out of my room today and take a trip to the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery. This was such a breath of fresh air and the perfect way to get me back into the swing of feeling arty and ready for uni at the end of this month! After being cooped up in my room for like 3 days it was so nice to leave the flat, get some real air in my lungs and take in some beautiful art work.

The exhibition was about Bauhaus and how that era and teachings impacted art, fashion, music and culture for years and years; and still does today in youth culture. The exhibition narrates the ways in which Bauhaus' legacy has been transmitted and transformed.

Interestingly enough, one of the exhibition rooms was dedicated to mod culture in the 60's and focussed on famous, timeless 60's fashion designer Mary Quant. She commented on Bauhaus work saying, they made 'modern design accessible'.

The 60's isn't one of my favourite eras of fashion but I still appreciate it, I can say the same for Bauhaus' work. I'm not totally mad on it but I still appreciate that it shaped art and design for decades after and still, decades to come.

There were 2 rooms in the gallery that I REALLY enjoyed. The one wad a dark room with black walls, with different projections projected onto the walls largely and different sets of photography on one wall and then different TV's and screens showing different films. This room was definitely more my style, film and photography and graphic design. HELLO!

The room included art from the 1970's. This is when punk culture was a massive thing in the UK. Along with punk culture came the art, fashion and music. So the pieces in this room that I really took to was the punk graphic design.

The hand rendered, photocopied, monochrome house-styles to punk graphic design is so beautiful to me. I think it's because this style has started to make a come back today, with rap but my generation is adapting it to making it their own due to changes in fashion and culture and art in general.

Some punk magazines/ zines that I am already aware of are Sniffing Glue, Peroxide and Slash.

Leading on from graphic design, the best room (personally, I think,) in the museum is the Notts Zine Library. I am a lover of zines so this was like heaven. I've never experienced a place like that before, just full of independent publications. It was beautiful and such a good opportunity for people that are trying to get their work out there!

I could have stood there for ages and looked through every zine, creating the stories in my head for the ones with no words and laughing at the humorous crazy feminist publications.

I really enjoyed this exhibition and really enjoyed my first experience of the Nottingham Contemporary and will of course be returning to read more zines in the near future and to view a new exhibition when the exhibits change!