It's a Wonderful Protest

The Velvet Acronyms are showing at Bonington Gallery in Nottingham, with the exhibition running until Saturday 12 December. The project is a collaboration between artists Anna Li and Simon Raven, and they describe their work as leaning on satirical 'crip humour' to challenge ableism in the arts. They're taking aim at a few different things: the ghettoisation of disability art, and the condescendingly 'celebratory' forms of inclusion that can crop up around it.

There's a live element to the show, too. The Bonington Vitrines area has been turned into an 'Exclusion Zone' for performance, where you're invited to take part in an absurdly upbeat 'Wonderful Protest' or a 'Psychic Music' ritual aimed at relieving student debt. So it's not just something to look at — you can get involved yourself.

Beyond the performances, the exhibition gathers an archive of previously unseen films, performance relics, photographs, posters and participatory interventions. Some of the spaces are left intentionally unfinished, so that new documentation and traces of live performances can accumulate over the course of the run. It's a show that changes as it goes, rather than staying fixed from opening day.

Bonington Gallery is at Nottingham Trent University's City Campus, in the Bonington Building on Dryden Street (NG1 4GG). Entry is free, and the gallery may be closed on some days during the exhibition, so it's worth checking before you head in. The show runs until Saturday 12 December, with the gallery open from 10:00 to 17:00.