Formwork: The Institution as Artist Medium
Join us for a group session exploring the ways in which public art institutions can become sustainable sites for structural change within the sector.
Organised by Andrew Goffey from the Centre for Critical Theory and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham, and Katie Simpson, Senior Curator at Nottingham Contemporary, the session explores the institution as an artistic medium that can be shaped and moulded. It considers how this freedom and malleability in design and scope can create opportunities for new ways of organising and working. The event also marks ten years since research and public programming on institutional analysis at Nottingham Contemporary, led by former Head of Public Programmes Dr Janna Graham, grounding the enquiry in past thinking and practice to examine how co-creative, collective, and non-hierarchical approaches operate within the institution today.
We will start by revisiting the research project Building as Body 2016 - 2018 by Manual Labours (Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards). Building as Body saw Nottingham Contemporary undergo a process of examination, exploring the ways in which buildings and bodies are fluid ecosystems which affect each other. This resulted in a co-produced health assessment of the organisation which Jenny Richards and Dr Janna Graham will discuss with us as a case study of institutional analysis in practice.
For the second half of the session, we welcome presentations from artists Débora Delmar and José García Oliva who each employ methods of institutional critique in their practice to interrogate how mechanisms of power are embedded within institutions. After the presentations, we will break out into small groups to dive deeper into the tactics and strategies used by each artist, to see what change might look like in action.
This event is the first in the Formwork series, which builds on Nottingham Contemporary’s ongoing interest in imagining how organisations can align their visible, public-facing work with less visible aspects, such as internal structures, questioning the role of public art institutions today as sites of change, equity, and freedom.
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Access
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This event will be held in Studio 1.
Speakers will use microphones.
This event is wheelchair accessible.
If you have any questions around access or have specific access requirements we can accommodate, please get in touch with us by emailing info@nottinghamcontemporary.org or phoning 0115 948 9750.
Andrew Goffey is an associate professor in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies and the director of the Centre for Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is the author, with Matthew Fuller of Evil Media, the editor, with Eric Alliez, of The Guattari Effect, and with Roland Faber, of The Allure of Things. He has also translated numerous books, including Lines of Flight and Schizoanalytic Cartographies, by Felix Guattari, and Capitalist Sorcery, In Catastrophic Times and Virgin Mary and the Neutrino, by Isabelle Stengers. He is currently doing research on ecology and aesthetics and has collaborated with Nottingham Contemporary for a number of years.
Katie Simpson is a curator from the East Midlands and holds the position of Senior Curator at Nottingham Contemporary. Her research interests align with socially, politically and environmentally engaged practices that explore alternatives to dominant narratives and methodologies. Her practice is guided by curiosity, encounters and openness with an aim to dismantle hierarchies of, and access to, art and culture. She has experience of commissioning ambitious and experimental artistic projects and public programming, as well as organising and nurturing artistic residencies and community engaged projects. In a freelance capacity, she mentors and supports artists with funding, grant, and residency application writing, and with the development of artistic and curatorial projects. Previously, she held the positions of Curator of Exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary, Studio Manager & Exhibitions Hub Curator within the Art Department at Goldsmiths (London), Co-Director at not-for-profit art organization Jupiter Woods, (London) and Curatorial Assistant at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (London). In 2020 she participated in the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s YCRP (Young Curator’s Residency Programme) co-curating the exhibition Waves Between Us in Turin. She received a BFA in Visual Culture from the University of Brighton (2013) and MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths (2018).
Dr Janna Graham is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures and Programme Leader of the BA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work examines the aural, visual and micropolitical dimensions of urban dispossession and resistance, and studies how legacies of colonial administration underpin neoliberal subjectivities, institutions and modes of publicity. Originally trained as a geographer, Graham’s work is informed by spatial theory, institutional analysis, sound investigation, curatorial practice, cultural studies and feminism. As a curator associated with the ‘educational turn in art’ she has developed projects at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, the New Museum, and Documenta. Her publications have featured in journals, edited collections and exhibition catalogues including the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Organisation, and Art and the Public Sphere. Graham is a member of the sound and political art collective Ultra-red.
Manual Labours is a practice-based research project exploring physical and emotional relationships to work, initiated by Jenny Richards and Sophie Hope. Jenny Richards’ research focuses on the politics of work, health and the body developed through collaborative and collective practice. She is a doctoral candidate on the KTD programme at Konstfack and KTH. Her project Against the Outsourced Body examines the effect and resistance to the expansion of commercialised, individualised and outsourced care. She has previously been co-director of Konsthall C, Stockholm where together with Anna Ahlstrand and Jens Strandberg she developed Home Works, an exhibition programme exploring the politics of domestic work and the home. Following this she worked at the art space Marabouparken Konsthall developing the two year exhibition programme Acts of Self Ruin. Alongside Manual Labours she collaborates with Johnny Chang on developing the platform Gathering Against, an online and physical tool library which gathers against individualised modes of cultural and political production, broadening access to tools and resources for collective practices.
Débora Delmar (b.1986, Mexico City, Mexico, lives and works between London, UK, and Mexico City) is a conceptual artist working within institutional critique. Her work utilises a range of media, primarily working within text, sculpture, and installation. Within her practice, she explores the societal impacts of capitalism, exploring the systems of circulation of goods and people within globalisation. Her installations reference the homogenising minimalist aesthetics utilised in 'non-spaces' such as banks and airports. Stemming from her interest in contractual agreements inherent to the production of exhibitions, Delmar creates detailed briefs that serve simultaneously as descriptive documents and instructions for her works. These range from legal contracts and architectural interventions, to commissioning artworks by incorporating local production methods, and by purchasing, renting, exchanging, collecting, and loaning objects.
Recent solo exhibitions include Trust, 2025, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London, UK; Bougainvilleas, 2025, Koraï, Nicosia, CY; Liberty & Security, Museo Jumex, MX, 2024; Castles, Llano, MX, 2023; Frieze Focus, with Llano Gallery, UK, 2023. She received the Stanley Picker Fellowship, Kingston University London, UK, in 2022; completed the Postgraduate Degree at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2019, and holds a BA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Recent Lectures include Kingston School of Art, 2025, SOMA, Mexico City, MX, 2024, Städelschule, Frankfurt, DE, 2024.
José García Oliva is a Venezuelan artist living and working in London. His practice focuses on outsourcing systems, migrant labour, and the hierarchies that sculpt everyday urban life, interrogating how these structures are experienced, negotiated, and reproduced within shared social spaces. He works through long-term collaborations that prioritise co-authorship and ongoing relationships, shaping how the work is made, shown, and circulated. His projects often unfold through enacted social exchanges or site-responsive provocations, taking the form of performances, drawings, sculptures, and public interventions.