We Chat to Artistic Director Candice Jacobs to Find Out More About OTOKA's Pop-up Art Exhibitions, Artist Residencies and Temporary Creative Events

Hello, Candice. What have you been doing since we last spoke to you back in February?
So, in February, I was working out of the Broadway Gallery. And I used that space to curate exhibitions and to develop new work for a solo exhibition. That solo exhibition was called All That is Fluid Melts into Air, and was the first time that I had made a large scale video work in collaboration with collectives of new mothers and women’s groups around the city, to explore my new role as a mother and how that is affecting and can be responded to through my practice. So the work that I made for that show, I’m continuing to develop into a much longer and larger video installation that will hopefully be shown at Quad in Derby in 2025. 

When my time at Broadway ended, I had been working for some time with a couple of different organisations who focus on taking on empty spaces and giving them to artists’ groups. One of them is called East Street Arts and it’s a charity based in Leeds. The old Clarks shoe shop on Wheeler Gate came up as an opportunity. But it was too big for me to just use by myself, so I decided to take it on in partnership with East Street Arts, and I also invited six other artists from the city to share the studio space, to share the building with me. 

I got approached by Broadway and an organisation called Platform Asia to host a multimedia video art exhibition of South Asian artists. We launched the space with that exhibition, which was called Sudden Beams. I continued to work with a collaborative duo called Framework for Practice. We also had a partnership with Liquid Light brewery, because one of the performances that was happening was using liquid light projection. And we had performances from Chooc Ly Tan, who’s a French artist, based in London, and a couple of other performances, one from Tom [Harris], and another Nottingham DJ called M75, who’s part of the Mimm collective. We had a really great launch for that exhibition and it was open for three weekends. 

We then did a big event for Nottingham Pride, which was a large screen printing exhibition with an artist called Leomi Sadler, who had collaborated with, or is part of, a collective called Stitch EnBytch. In the evening, we worked in collaboration with DirtyFilthySexy, which is Nottingham’s longest running drag night. It’s their fifteen year anniversary. And so we hosted their performance night, their drag performance night here, as well. That sold out and we had our largest event to date, which had about 120 people here. It had a really great energy… and that takes us up to today. Since we found out that we would lose our space at Wheeler Gate, we’ve been trying to secure our next space.

What do you have coming up for November?
For November I’ll be developing the next chapter of All That is Fluid Melts Into Air, the three screen video work and solo show that I created for Broadway to include recent footage that I captured under the Adriatic sea. I’ll be looking for collaborators on the production of the video, actually - so any producers, editors, colourists, sound designers and VFX artists interested in working with me, please do get in touch!

I’m also working on a series of new editioned art works – a gallery recently returned some of the 3D-printed nine carat gold plated cigarette sculptures I made a while back called Fortuna, which I am redesigning into candles and miniature Zen gardens. I’ll be selling these through the OTOKA online shop just in time for Christmas, and also through the #artistsupportpledge - a fantastic support strategy established by artist Matthew Burrows - so please keep an eye out on my social media @otokapresents and the hashtag #artistsupportpledge for updates on these!

I’m also having some very positive conversations with East Street Arts and Nottingham BID about taking on future spaces on Lister Gate, so hopefully something will come through soon and I can get started with developing my next programme of activity, which will hopefully include an event with the State Funded Lesbian Disco, hosted in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary at the end of November/beginning of December, and a collaborative group exhibition with Chaos Magic, where I’ll be showing Ideal Vague or Hazy, a VR installation that transports you to the centre of the UK’s largest stone circle, using headsets situated inside large UV steel pyramids filled with dry ice and white Quartz sand. This was originally commissioned for ArtNight 2020 by Nikki Agency (AKA artist Leila Arenou), Canan Batur (Curator at Nottingham Contemporary) and Estelle Marois (Curator at Nicoletti Contemporary, London).

@otokapresents