Nottingham in art - Looking up and Behind

Image: Rachel Saunders photography

Look up, and you'll find a different city.

Whatever inner city you inhabit or visit, take some time to look up, and odds are you'll find spires, towers, tiles, facades, clocks, statuary and more, which breath above the plastic shop fronts. 

Look behind, and you'll find a different city.

Alleyways and gardens, unexpected havens, graveyards and green spaces, statues and squares. 

Nottingham isn't a big city but is has a more than its fair share of surprises and survivors, and they can be easy to overlook, or become over familiar with and miss their real significance historically or architecturally. An old city which strained at it's boundaries before given leave to expand, cruelly treated by developers over many ages, the historic parts of Nottingham are all the more delightful for still standing where others have fallen.

---

Nottingham Council House is an instantly recognisable part of the city skyline, and the dome and friezes around it now form the focus for many photos. Sculptures of Commerce, Civic Law, Prosperity and Knowledge sit around the dome.

The rest of the building is, well, it's impressive, but it's the dome we all know that signifies being home in the heart of the city.

Ahh, the Viccy centre, a shopping haven for high street lovers and indoor market delvers, but once a haven for train spotters...

Victoria Station is remembered only in the clock tower now, a strange and noble 100 foot tall eruption from the glass and fiberglass which many don't even think to question. Few Nottinghamites know the origins of the clock tower, or even recognise it out of context!

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” - Marcus Tullus Cicero

A grand but restrained doorway, into a cool and quietly traditional corridor... Bromley House Library is hidden away, and with it, a secret walled garden. An independent library, members are lucky to have this haven of both library and green space, in the midst of all the modern bustle of Nottingham.

​The lesser known of Nottingham, or a different perspective on them, formed the basis for some of my artwork. I went a step further though, using Nottingham lace to pattern the silhouettes, brass rubbings from Nottingham Castle Museum to create backgrounds, material printed with Nottingham lace to paint as cloudy skies. The history of Nottingham's lace trade is wound through the art, just as it helped to fund and build the civic pride and architecture of the city itself.

See more art here