Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham

Arriving at Nottingham railway station and looking up towards the city’s ancient Lace Market district, a corrugated gold box can be seen shimmering above its brick-built neighbours like a luxurious shipping container.

This piece of architectural bling is Nottingham Contemporary, the new £19.8m art gallery by Caruso St John, the architects responsible for the New Art Gallery Walsall. Even from a distance, the message is clear: the white-cube concept is dead; welcome to gold galleries with strange floor plans and windows.

But the whole Nottingham Contemporary project is infused with a spirit of playful irony. There are references to modernist architecture in the building’s exterior cladding, specifically HP Berlage’s Holland House in London, and Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York. It also genuflects to art deco cinemas in the canopy that overhangs the entrance.

But it’s the surface luxury that grabs you. The building’s exterior is clad in panels of gold anodised aluminium and 13 metre-high vertical columns of green-tinted cast concrete, each scalloped member impressed with an authentic lace pattern in homage to the city’s industrial heritage as a leading centre of textile production.

The pattern was derived from a sample of 19th-century Nottingham Trent edging-lace known as cherry blossom that was reputedly found in a time capsule buried on site, although this story is probably apocryphal.

In fact, the site was less notable for romantic artefacts than for the more prosaic evidence of contemporary inner-city dereliction, as it was found liberally sprinkled with hypodermic needles and other urban detritus. It also marked the confluence of hills and gullies of varying heights and depths, bisected with sewage pipes and electricity cables.

Temporary shows

Just as the decorative flourishes on the building’s exterior reflect local context, the interior extends an open invitation to the world outside. One way that has been achieved is through large windows in the first main galleries which afford views up towards the city centre while allowing passers-by to see in.

This also helps incorporate the local context into the works on display. The unusual tapering shape of the main galleries reflects the irregular nature of the site plan. The architects cite artists’ spaces of the 1960s as a source of inspiration.

Nottingham Contemporary is a kunsthalle, a venue for temporary exhibitions, and there are no plans to build a collection.

The success of the gallery will depend on the extent to which its director Alex Farquharson and his team can strike a balance between challenging exhibitions that extend the public’s awareness of contemporary art and more crowd-pleasing shows that boost visitor numbers. Farquharson hopes it will attract 200,000 people in the first year and 125,000 thereafter.

The two inaugural exhibitions seemed perfectly pitched to balance both sides of the brief.

A Marriage of Styles (14 November 2009-24 January), devoted to a selection of David Hockney’s paintings, prints and drawings from 1960-1968, was juxtaposed with recent work by Los Angeles artist Frances Stark (14 November 2009-24 January), whose collages, like Hockney’s 1960s work, make liberal use of text and literary references.

Farquharson believes Hockney’s work of that period is very relevant to artists today and the Stark show certainly made that point.

Transparency

There were also subtle cross-currents evident between the Hockney works and the architecture of the new building. “Beverley Hills houses seemed full of showers of all shapes and sizes,” Hockney said after moving to Los Angeles in 1968, “with clear glass doors, with frosted glass doors, with transparent curtains, with semi-transparent curtains. They all seemed to me to have elements of luxury.”

Ideas in art surrounding luxury and transparency are dominant themes throughout Nottingham Contemporary. The public outside can see in; visitors inside can see out; and every gallery offers a clear indication of extending into adjoining rooms to give a sense of continuity. The main galleries use pyramidal skylights to allow up to 300-400 lux beyond normal gallery lighting.

Aside from the four main galleries, which give a combined floor area of 775 sq metres, the top (ground) floor includes a small study area with internet access and an archive of documents and other study aids. This is open to anyone who is curious about the new gallery and how its exhibitions are devised and curated.

Adjoining this is the Small Collections room devised by London-based artist Pablo Bronstein, comprising a series of 18th- and 19th-century collectors’ cabinets containing “miniature exhibitions”, changing every six months.

Apparently aiming to “reflect contemporary art’s concern with collecting and display”, this comes across as deeply contrived and light years away from the Wunderkammern that inspired it.

The gallery’s lower floor contains an airy and spacious cafe and bar and a versatile room that will be used for performances, lectures, and artists’ films. The inaugural project comprised six films connecting with the Hockney and Stark displays upstairs.

The Stark and Hockney exhibitions are being followed by Star City: The Future Under Communism (13 February-17 April), a group show inspired by the space race and science fiction under cold war communism. It will feature the work of a generation of artists who grew up in Soviet-dominated countries before the collapse of communism.

Nottingham’s recently gentrified Lace Market district is where the locals go for a night out. Their new contemporary art centre, which looks superb when its gold and lace-impressed panels are illuminated, adds a further drop of urban glamour.

Tom Flynn is a freelance journalist

Cost £19.8m
Main funders Nottingham City Council, Arts Council England, East Midlands Development Agency, European Regional Development Fund, Greater Nottingham Partnership
Architect Caruso St John
Consulting Engineer Arup