BACKLIT

April News Roundup: What's on, what's coming up, and how to get involved Alongside our members' show EDITION26, find out about the new public sculpture of Maid Marian, workshops where you can help make it, and the new trustees shaping our next phase. We’ve also got a film screening on the legacy of empire, new organisations moving into the building, and updates from our studio artists and BFI partnership with @cjdebarra . Read the full update on Substack via the link in our Linktree. -- EDITION26 📆 When: 18 April – 09 May Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12:00 – 16:00 📍 Where: BACKLIT Gallery, NG3 1GJ -- Photo credit: Josh Jones @joshuavjones

BACKLIT 2026 is shaped by how history is touched and co-created in public spaces. Here’s what’s on: 🌱 Spring 2026 To dig for fossils in the soft blue sea (Pending Collective) Preview event: 13 March Exhibition continues: 14 March EDITION26: Reflections Preview event: 17 April Exhibition continues: 18 April – 09 May The Empire’s Old Clothes – Publication Launch and Screening Screening event: 29 May Time: 18:00 – 20:00 ☀️ Summer 2026 Our Marian Preview event: 17 July Exhibition continues: 18 July – 08 August Open Studios 17 July 17:00 – 19:00 🍂 Autumn 2026 Tessa Boffin: Where We Touch the Archive Preview event: 18 September Exhibition continues: 19 September – 17 October ❄️ Winter 2026 Lands of Uncertain Shape Preview event: 06 November Exhibition continues: 07 November – 28 November Open Studios 06 November 17:00 – 19:00 Archive development is central to 2026. This work will create opportunities for emerging curators and new interpretations shaped by queer, feminist, and disabled practices. Subscribe to our newsletter (link in bio) for monthly previews, events, and updates.

Today is your last day to visit EDITION26 from 12 – 4pm! Márcia Porto is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Márcia Porto is an artistteacher. She received her MFA in Visual Poetics and her BFA in Visual Arts from the University, Unicamp — Campinas, Brazil. In her work as an artist, Márcia operates in the symbolic field. She is interested in women’s speech and the actions of the social force around the world. It aims to share the experiences between women of different cultures, their affections, and mutual bonds. She explores the relationship between literature, historical sources, alchemy, personal histories, and current events; creating auto fictional narratives contaminated by these references. Forty years ago, she was teaching her first art class never to stop.

Today and tomorrow are your last chance to see EDITION26 at BACKLIT Gallery. Running until 09 May, the exhibition brings together BACKLIT artist members presenting two works from different moments in their practice: one created before 2024 and a new work from 2025–2026. Across the exhibition, older and newer works are shown in dialogue, revealing how artistic practices evolve over time. Recurring themes, shifts in material, changes in scale and revisited ideas trace the development of each artist’s work. Some pairings highlight significant transformation, while others reveal quieter continuities that have remained across years of practice. EDITION26 offers a collective snapshot of artistic growth within and beyond BACKLIT, inviting audiences to reflect on creativity as an evolving process shaped by time, experimentation and changing perspectives. Opening times: 18 April – 09 May Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12:00 – 16:00 Featured artists: Dan Shutt Karen Chesney @karenchesneypots Peter Chesney Lois Sabet @loisgardnersabet Lucy Davies @lucybronwenart Lucy Nelson @lucycollardnelson Marcia Porto @marciaporto.art Natalie Chung @artby.nataliechung Neville Smith @nevilleeldred Panya Banjoko @panyathepoet Sara Gaynor @saragaynorphoto Theodora Prassa @theodoraprassa Xin Chen @xinxinxin_chen

Lucy Davies  is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Lucy Bronwen Davies is an ecological artist and creative facilitator. Her practise investigates natural materials foraged from local and significant rural environments. She’s fascinated in manipulating the natural form to break down at a macro or molecular level to regenerate into new possibilities. Lucy’s work aims to remind her audience of the personal and environmental benefits of reconnecting to the natural world using local and Celtic folklore and their forgotten narratives, inviting her audience to confront their own sense of belonging. Currently, Lucy works as a freelance facilitator, producer and content curator across schools, arts organisations, community spaces and events in Nottinghamshire.

Karen Chesney  is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Nottinghamshire based ceramicist Karen Chesney studied at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham. After graduating she set up her first pottery studio in Newark, building a gas fired kiln. Subsequent moves and responses to availability have meant changes to kilns, firing temperatures and glazes. There have always been two strands to the work, domestic ‘functional’ ware and non functional sculptural pieces, both centred around the joy of throwing and manipulating clay. A fascination with bird ‘ornithological’ characteristics have been explored throughout her career, recent work allowing for emphasis on materials, further abstraction and inclusion of found metal objects.

Join us for a screening and publication launch event of The Empire’s Old Clothes, a short, non-linear film by Priya Mistry (@whatsthebigmistry ) that confronts the enduring myths and propaganda of the so-called British Empire. Moving through histories of eugenics, the invention of the gender binary, enslavement and exoticisation, and the role of technology from early film photography to contemporary AI, the work exposes how these legacies persist today, shaping experiences of racism and ableism in post-Empire Brexit Britain. Both a provocation and an invitation, The Empire’s Old Clothes asks us to rethink and rewrite inherited histories, and to consider what it means to take action against racism. At this event, we will screen the full film (15 minutes), alongside the launch of Mistry’s new publication of the same title — featuring rich imagery, artist quotes, and documentation from the associated exhibition at Attenborough Arts Centre (2025). With thanks to Arts Council England, Unlimited, and Disability Arts Online. The Empire's Old Clothes, @whatsthebigmistry Image: Simon Alleyne 📍 Screening Space, second floor 📅 Friday 29 May 2026, 18:00 – 20:00 🎟️ Please book your place through the link in our bio – limited tickets available

Lucy Nelson is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Lucy is a visual artist who joins a material-driven practice with concerns around woman/ nature stereotypes, disconnection from nature and the experience of maternal loss. Lucy works predominantly with synthetic materials to create ambiguous sculptures. The medical specimen is often referenced through clinical staging whilst interweaving ideas of absence, growth, fragility and interrupted processes.

Theodora Prassa is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Theodora Prassa is a Greek artist, maker and educator based in Nottingham. Her practice spans across different formats and includes installation, mixed-media, digital image, textiles, and video. She manipulates materials and plays with abstraction, creating digital and handmade collages that defy the given and appeal to imagination. Repetition is often identified in her work, for instance through patterns, textures, and images, showing that even the most inert things are open to alterity and re-invention. Her work critically engages with topics such as the public space and the public/ private distinction, and more recently with the production of meaning that takes place with migration. She has received awards and been commissioned. She takes part in art residencies, which has allowed her to have her work exhibited nationally and internationally in various exhibitions and festivals.

Natalie Chung is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Natalie Chung is a multidisciplinary artist working across two- and three-dimensional forms. Enjoyment and material experimentation drive her process, exploring how meaning emerges through making. Earlier works focused on portraits and distorted or partially obscured faces; recent works expand into three-dimensional character-like forms using clay, fabric, cardboard, and pipe cleaners. Her practice moves between the imaginary and the real, reflecting on digital living, memory, and emotional displacement. By giving form to internal states and abstract situations, the work creates tangible forms that function as both emotional refuge and a way of understanding lived experience

Contribute to Nottingham’s new Maid Marian sculpture in two small-group workshop with artist Alicja Biała (second image). These workshops will contribute directly to the creation of a new public artwork of Maid Marian for the city. During the workshop, you'll take part in a hands-on session making elements for the sculpture, and explore the stories, plants, and meanings behind the artwork. No experience needed. 📆 Dates Saturday 23 May, 10.30–12.30 Sunday 24 May, 10.30–12.30 📍 Location: BACKLIT Gallery, NG3 1GJ ☝️ Availability: 10 places per session Under 16s can attend with an adult but won’t take part in making the sculptural elements. Book via Eventbrite in the Linktree in our bio. About the artist Alicja Biała ( @alicjabiala ) is an internationally exhibited artist working across sculpture, painting and installation. Her public projects explore landscape, ecology and cultural memory. The Maid Marian sculpture is commissioned by Nottingham City Council ( @mynottingham ) and delivered by BACKLIT Gallery in partnership with It’s in Nottingham ( @itsinnottingham ) Photo credits: @joshuavjones Work in progress drawing: Alicja Biała

Dr Panya Banjoko is featured in EDITION26, presenting two works that reflect different stages of their practice and the ways their ideas have evolved over time. 📅 18 April – 09 May, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 16:00 Dr Panya Banjoko is a socially engaged creative, traversing the academic and creative industries, a poet, filmmaker, patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and founding director of Nottingham Black Archive. Dr Banjoko is a multi-award-winning poet and essayist. Her debut poetry collection, Some Things (2018) and pamphlet (Re)Framing the Archive (2022) were released by Burning Eye Books and explore identity, belonging and representation. Dr Banjoko’s practice-led doctoral research, ‘The Politics of Poetry in Nottingham: Nottingham Black Archive and African-Caribbean Writers and Networks (1950s and 1980s) include a new collection of poetry based on the archive with some of the poems placed on permanent display at Newstead Abbey. She has written articles for the Conversation, BBC Bitesize online magazine, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour sharing her story of being a working-class academic.