Nottingham Contemporary

Samia Halaby (b.1936 in Jerusalem) is a Palestinian-American artist, and scholar living and working in New York.

Halaby is a painter who was educated in the 1950s in the American Midwest, at a time when abstract expressionism was popular. While her work is very much in line with American art movements she evolved with, it is consciously enriched by the history of pictorial expression worldwide. Her oeuvre is today central to the study of abstraction within both global and Arabic visual language.

In her practice, she methodically studies the textures, surfaces, and colours of her surroundings, through the prism of her ongoing theoretical studies. Looking at the effect of light on the aspect of objects around her, or creating illusions of roundness on plane surfaces, she continuously investigates how the human eye records the world: she pays special attention to how we see our surroundings while moving, how surfaces seem to expand and contract as we pass them on the street, or how we react to sudden noises that capture our full attention. In the mid-1980s, her time as a visiting artist at the University of Hawaii marked a turning point in her exploration of motion. The constant flux she tries to capture on canvas pushes her to break free from the traditional rectangular fabric. Playing with time, space, and movement in her work, she produces large installations that extend beyond the canvas edges, creating shaped and cut-out canvases, three-dimensional mobiles, and unconventionally large paintings that force the viewer to walk alongside them. Using the most advanced tools available to her at the time, Halaby taught herself coding and started in 1986 to programme kinetic paintings on an amiga computer, even coding sound into several pieces. These experimentations with computer-generated visuals naturally evolved into the Kinetic Painting Program, through which she transformed the keyboard of her PC into a live digital painting instrument.

In over six decades, Halaby has produced an immense body of work and is a very particular, innovative figure within her generation of artists. Understanding what parts of a painting the eye will first see, and how our mind will record the visual, she constantly foregrounds works and techniques and, in retrospect, was at the avant-garde of artistic production throughout her career.

As an independent scholar she has contributed to the documentation of Palestinian art of the twentieth century. Her writings on art history, pedagogy, and aesthetics have also appeared in numerous publications over the last three decades. As an educator, Halaby introduced a groundbreaking undergraduate studio art programme to art departments throughout the Midwest and was the first full-time female associate professor at the Yale School of Art for nearly a decade.

Guohan Zheng (born Ningbo, China) began shaping his sound within the underground music movement of southern China. After relocating to Nottingham, UK, he became involved with the city’s music scene where he self-released his solo LP ‘Lost Sound Book’ in 2021, and followed with EP ‘City of the Sun and Moon’ in 2022 on Darker Than Wax. Drawing from a tapestry of organic grooves and global influences, both projects have received support from radios and selectors worldwide, including Don Letts, Mr. Scruff, Osunlade, Shy One and more. As a selector/DJ, Guohan hosts a monthly show on Balamii Radio, curating sonic journeys on Radio Alhara and Baihui Radio, sharing his eclectic taste with friends across the world. He is also a regular presence at listening bars like Brilliant Corners and JAZU.

Apart from his own production, Guohan co-founded Running Circle Records in 2017 and launched its physical shop in Nottingham's Sneinton Market in 2022. He is also releasing projects for artists from China through Meridian Sounds, a Xiamen-based record imprint showcasing the diverse culture of South China and beyond.

Liv Penrose Punnett is an independent curator, consultant, and M4C & AHRC Researcher at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary. Drawn to alternative ways of knowing, Liv uses contemporary art to unpick, question, and re-imagine, and has curated numerous Arts Council supported exhibitions and events, working with artists such as Susan Hiller, Dorothy Cross, Feral Practice, and Tai Shani. Her artistic practice includes printmaking, installation, and projection.
Liv is a member of the Artists Information Companies Artists Council, and a Fine Art lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. As Director at Haarlem Artspace, a rural contemporary studio and gallery in Derbyshire, Liv leads experimental cultural programmes focused on spiritual ecology and intersectional environmentalism.
Clients and employers include The National Trust, Artes Mundi in Wales, New Art Exchange Nottingham, and Arusha Gallery London. Liv holds an Arts and Humanities Research Council Award, the SIA Gallery Award and the Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Award, and her publications are held in The Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, The Ruskin Archive, and the Tate Library and Archive.