Two art exhibitions, one featuring work by an international artist and the other showing photographs celebrating the lives of the LGBTQ+ community in the UK, have opened at Nottingham’s Bonington Gallery.
Layt de Kam is a newly-commissioned body of installations, film and textile work produced by artist Ibiye Camp.
“We are so excited to be presenting Ibiye Camp’s first institutional solo exhibition of entirely new work.”
Tom Godfrey, Curator & Director of Bonington Gallery
At the heart of the exhibition a critical reflection on the temporary power ship deployment off the coast of West African cities – an intervention designed to help unstable energy infrastructure.
Tom Godfrey, curator and director of Bonington Gallery on Nottingham Trent University’s city campus, said: “We are so excited to be presenting Ibiye Camp’s first institutional solo exhibition of entirely new work.
“Ibiye’s work reflects the multi-disciplinary surroundings of the art school that the gallery is situated within.”
The title of the exhibition means ‘light is coming’ and aims to evoke both hope and uncertainty, while celebrating the coastal communities.
Research for Layt de kam was carried out during a visit to Sierra Leone in March 2025, where the phrase was commonly used during the power outages during the artist’s trip.
Lily Williams, exhibition co-ordinator, said:” This exhibition is about power ships that land outside countries that have bad power economics.
“These pieces are about how these ships loom and bring a weird presence.”
According to Lily, Camp “combines spatial intervention, film and textiles to examine how brutalism infrastructure intimidates everyday life.”
The exhibit features 20 different instalments including GLOW, a child’s tale about a ‘foreign visitor’ bringing light with a soundtrack.
Alongside this exhibit, the Bonington Gallery is also presenting Through Our eyes, In Our Words.
This can be seen in the Bonington vitrines, an exhibition exploring aging, belonging and inclusion for middle-aged and older LGBT+ people in Britain.
The photographs were taken by the people whose stories they tell, showing personal testimonies of the places they love and feel seen.
Tom Godfrey, curator, said: “It’s an honour to have the opportunity to share experiences from older and intergeneration LGBTQ+ individuals, on the occasion of LGBTQ+ History Month in February.”
The two exhibitions run until March 7 and are free to enter.
