- The gradual reopening at the lake will begin on Tuesday, May 18, 2021
- The Lakeside exhibits and museum will reopen first.
- Indoor and outdoor performances will resume in June.
Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham will be open to the public starting Tuesday May 18, after being closed for over a year.
The gradual return begins with the reopening of the Djanogly Gallery, where visitors can see the much-anticipated exhibition of works by Nottingham-born artist Mat Collishaw. This is Collishaw’s first major solo show in the city of his birth, which has built an international reputation since graduating from Goldsmith’s College in the late 1980s.
Mat Collishaw became one of the most important generations of young British artists in the 1990s, alongside his contemporaries Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. His works often draw on topics from art and photo history and play with opposites. They show the compelling power of images to attract, repel and deceive us. Early forms of photography are combined with newer technologies such as animatronics to create works that address the moral dilemmas of the present.
With his installation Albion from 2016 – a ghostly appearance of the Major Oak – alongside other works of art such as The Centrifugal Soul, a modern version of a Victorian zoetrope, which points to our preoccupation with the self-image today; This exhibition offers an inspiring contemporary art experience for anyone looking for a much-needed cultural break.
Albion by Mat Collishaw 2017
The Weston Gallery in Lakeside and the University of Nottingham Museum will also reopen next week on Thursday May 20th. Weston Gallery reopens with an exhibition celebrating Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday, celebrating the founder of modern nursing. This exhibition sheds new light on the Lady with the Lamp, which examines her family roots in Derbyshire and her post-Crimean work to improve sanitation in homes. The museum, two-time Nottinghamshire Museum of the Year winner, displays archaeological artifacts from Nottinghamshire and the wider East Midlands and is reopening with a smaller exhibit showing how the museum’s collections are cared for and how they are used in a variety of ways.
To ensure a comfortable and safe experience for everyone, Lakeside limits visits to its galleries and museums to just six visitors per 30- or 40-minute time slot. This means that audiences can pre-book online, knowing that they can enjoy a near-private tour of these fantastic exhibitions and spaces.
After reopening for the next week, Lakeside’s reopening program will get stronger and stronger.
Spring into summer
Halfway through May, the Nottingham-based Makers of Imaginary Worlds present Thingamabobas at the Djanogly Theater on the lake, outdoor workshops for the whole family at Highfields Park and the spectacular online superhero Aidy the Awesome with breathtaking aerial tricks for families with Children. Thingamabobas promises to be something special. This playful, sensory experience for the whole family (ages 4+) enables young viewers to meet and interact with an animatronic and robot-controlled circus troupe of bizarrely wonderful machines that will excite, excite and fascinate you.
In June and July, Lakeside moves out of its buildings to host theater and dance performances in its beautiful parkland and to give two concerts at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham.
The popular Pavilion Café am See and the public toilets accessible from the outside will remain open during this time. The café has a take-away service.
Many of these events were made possible by a grant from the Fund for Cultural Recreation of the Ministry of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
/ Public release. This material is from the original organization and may be of a temporal nature and may be edited for clarity, style and length. Full view here.