We Hear About the New Art Collective Taking Over Broadway Gallery - OTOKA

What is your background in the arts? 
I co-founded the art studios One Thoresby Street and for around twenty years, I have used contemporary art as a way to put on some of the best parties and amazing art exhibitions in Nottingham - which I believe have helped to set the tone, construct the communities, build the careers and establish the energy around the art and the artists that continue to exist here today.

I’ve always been inspired by artist-led DIY attitudes towards art and try to bring that essence into everything I do. I currently work as a lecturer teaching at Central Saint Martins and Chelsea College of Art.

What is OTOKA and why did you set it up? 
OTOKA is the Slavic word for island, and like an island it is solid in its grounding which is built up from years of sediment (experiences and memories) that each contribute to what now exists both beneath and within its surface. Like an island, its mass is surrounded by liquid, a liquid form of modernity - a metaphor written by Zygmunt Bauman that describes the condition of constant mobility and change that he sees in relationships, identities, and global economics within contemporary society. As an island, OTOKA can provide all that I need in order to become a self-sufficient body, I just need to know what to look for and how to use it.  

When I came back to Nottingham from London last year because of COVID, I also became a mother and started to see the city that I used to live in with fresh eyes. The city centre was empty, so much of what used to exist was no longer there. But, as sad as this was, because of what I had done in the city before, I saw this as an opportunity - what if I could take on these empty spaces and move from one to another, island hopping, where, instead of worrying about losing space (which happened with One Thoresby Street), I could respond to each space differently and broadcast directly into people's homes through OTOKA’s website, which would also act as an artwork. So, much like the internet, I wouldn’t need to be fixed in a location, I could always be transient, fluid and nomadic, following people around in their pockets, occasionally manifesting into physical space as and when they became available.  

What are your plans for OTOKA going forward? 
Throughout February and March I will use OTOKA and its takeover of Broadway Gallery as an open studio and workshop space that morphs into a public gallery that stays static for a moment of realisation as final experience; where the audience clamber through a crystalline structure shining with hints of neon into glistening pools of screens that move around to track and trace the bodies and words that flow through dying exotic waters. 

I’m hoping to work with a collective of art organisations around the city called Art NEST who are addressing their carbon footprint, and with the Green Hustle and the Green Light in the City partnership, to gather their financial paper waste. I also want to work with individuals - new mothers and people who identify as mothers or who are in the position of care, and their children, through a series of workshops led in collaboration with musicians, the creator of the Femme Fatale Gals zine and Nottingham’s youngest board member of UNESCO City of Literature, Khaya Job, during February half-term. Through this, we will build a giant paper mache crystal sculpture together and chat about how fluidity, liquidity and stability are connected to the economy, climate and the internet to ask what effect this is having on our wellbeing and sense of self. Our conversations will be transformed into a series of neon text works and a poetic form of text that sits within VR films embedded within the sculptural installation. 

Tell us about the exhibitions that have been on display at Broadway Gallery…
Over a four-week period across November to December, I used OTOKA to host four exhibitions in the Broadway Gallery built around the broad theme of the intrinsic and unequal relations between data, technology and people, to provoke questions about our digital lives and futures, how sustainable or desirable they are and what alternative worlds we might want or need to create.  

I worked with Framework for Practice, a partnership between Nottingham-based Will Harvey and Ryan Boultbee, to use scaffolding as a display strategy that could minimise the environmental impact of our activities. 

The exhibitions brought artworks from 2018 Turner Prize-nominated artists Forensic Architecture, Tara Kelton from India, Ben Grosser from America and Yuri Pattison together in the city, with additional online artists' works from Nottingham-based Joey Holder, Lumen Art Prize winner Libby Heaney, and artist and author of New Dark Age, James Bridle. The art is supplemented by podcast interviews and a PDF Reader featuring essays by leading academics in the field of digital privacy.

That sounds really exciting. How might people get involved with the project? 
You can get involved in the workshops that we’ll be doing at Broadway Gallery during February half-term by emailing OTOKA or by booking online through Broadway’s website. Alternatively, you can follow @otokapresents on Instagram.

My solo show All that is fluid melts into air, featuring the collectively-made paper mache crystal, will open in March. 

otoka.org