The exhibition Weird Hope Engines is set to embrace the culture of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) to examine play as a site of projection, simulation and connection, and to explore imagined futures and alternate realities.
The first exhibition of its kind, Weird Hope Engines will highlight the practices of innovative designers, artists, and writers in the field of independent game design, and brings their work into dialogue with fellow travellers 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. Visitors are invited to participate in both solo and collaborative gaming experiences that highlight questions of collective responsibility, personal testimony, and colonial legacy, reframing our expectations of gaming imaginaries as potent sites for rethinking social organisation, cross-cultural understanding, and personal reverie.
Migrating between the dreamworlds of science fiction, fantasy, folkloric myth, and pressing social realities, a series of newly commissioned play experiences by David Blandy, Chris Bisette, Laurie O’Connel, Zedeck Siew, and Angela Washko 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. Blandy’s Alien Pastoral: The Strain invites visitors to develop a new biological research centre to imagine a greener future. Angela Washko’s work questions the discriminatory language and gender stereotypes often used within gaming.
Original displays by Amanda Lee Franck, Tom K Kemp with Patrick Stuart, Scrap Princess, and Andrew Walter and Shuyi Zhang illustrators for Melsonian Arts Council the publishers of role playing game TROIKA! showcase the unique function of visual art within gaming imaginaries, in which image making moves beyond functional illustration into complex relationships with collaborative storytelling.
The exhibition is especially fitting for Bonington Gallery, located in Nottingham, a city with a pivotal role in gaming history. As the home of Games Workshop and the iconic Warhammer series, Nottingham has long been at the heart of the tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) scene. The city remains at the forefront of the industry, with Games Workshop recently joining the FTSE 100 as one of UK’s leading companies.
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.
Weird Hope Engines, 22nd March 2025 – 10th May 2025 Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University
Launch event, 6PM-8PM, 21st March Book a FREE ticket
Reactor Halls, an experimental programme of live performance, film and music events curated by Reactor, is a supporting partner of this exhibition.
Critical Hits Zine Fair
On the exhibition’s opening date, Bonington Gallery will hold a day of talks, tables, and screenings celebrating the cultures of tabletop roleplaying games. The event brings together independent publishers, artists, and writers exploring themes of critical worlding, resistance, and alternative futures.
Contributors include Melsonian Arts Council, Copy/Paste Co-op, Warp Miniatures, Ramshackle Games and others. It features a programme of talks and conversations with artists from the exhibition including Zedeck Siew and Angela Washko; panel discussions on fantasy illustration, game design and miniature fabrication with Andrew Walter, Amanda Lee Franck, Scrap World, and Alex Huntley; gaming sessions with David Blandy, Andrew Walter and Angelo Washko; and a film screening programme including the documentaries World of Darkness (2017) and Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons (2019).
Critical Hits Zine Fair – 22nd March 2025 11am – 5pm Book a FREE ticket
