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Weird Hope Engines

An illustration of a dystopian planet with aliens with multiple arms.
Exhibitions | Open to all

The latest offering from Bonington Gallery is Weird Hope Engines. This experimental exhibition embraces the culture of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) to explore play as a site of projection, simulation, communal myth-making, distorted temporality, and alternate possibility. Free and open to all.

  • From: Saturday 22 March 2025, 11 am
  • To: Saturday 10 May 2025, 3 pm
  • Location: Bonington Gallery, Bonington Building, Dryden Street, Nottingham, NG1 4GG
  • Cost: Free
  • Download this event to your calendar
Past event

Event details

The first exhibition of its kind, Weird Hope Engines highlights the practices of innovative designers, artists, and writers in the field of independent game design, and brings their work into dialogue with those in the field of critical art practice.

Curated by David Blandy, Rebecca Edwards and Jamie Sutcliffe, this experimental exhibition reimagines Bonington Gallery as a hybrid lab — a testing site for the development of new worlding experiences, an active gaming hub, and an archive of maps, concept artworks, rulebooks, and gaming curiosities.

Explore a series of newly-commissioned play experience which utilise a range of mechanics, from dice rolls and diary keeping to tumble towers and the recording of personal anecdotes, to encourage new approaches to immersive play.

Original displays showcase the unique function of visual art within gaming imaginaries, in which image making moves beyond functional illustration into complex relationships with collaborative storytelling. Archival vitrines illustrate Nottingham’s essential role in the development of gaming history.

An original essay-film by the curators, produced in collaboration with Adam Sinclair and Lotti Closs, explores the shared experience of game space as a site of hallucinatory possibility.

Find out more about the curators, artists and film makers.

[Image: Andrew Walter, courtesy of the artist]

Exhibition launch

Book your free ticket for our exhibition launch event on Friday 21 March.

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Location details

Address:

Bonington Gallery
Bonington Building
Dryden Street
 Nottingham
 NG1 4GG

Travel Info:

Visit our travel pages for campus maps and detailed information on how to get here.

Past event

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