Former artist-in-residence at the University of Nottingham Museum, Carol Adlam, has launched a Twitter exhibition showcasing some of her work during her time at the Museum.

The residency was supported by an Arts Council England three year Resilience Grant given to the Museum.

The exhibition features a number of Carol’s illustrations from the Museums archaeological collection. The collections cover a 250,000 year period and are mainly from the East Midlands. There are also smaller collections from Egypt, Cyprus, Greece and Italy.

One of the great strengths of the collection is that is shows everyday objects which visitors really respond too as they provide us with a wider understanding of everyday life in the past. Carol’s exhibition also includes objects from other countries as well as some drawings from the wider university collections such as the Life Sciences department.

Several also show details from an exhibition held at the Museum while she was Artist-in-Residence called a ‘Greek in Egypt’.  At the centre of the exhibition was the British Museum Spotlight Loan of a sculpture of a hunter, discovered at the port of Naukratis on the Canopic branch of the river Nile, dating to the 6th century BC. Egypt opened a port at Naukratis in the 7thc BC, welcoming the peoples of the Mediterranean to trade.

The exhibition also displayed objects from Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and the Ashmolean Museum. A Greek in Egypt coincided with the major British Museum exhibition Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds.

View the exhibition on Carol’s Twitter feed.

Carol hopes the online exhibition will draw attention to some of the Museum’s collections and wants to remind people of the commitment to hope, curiosity and deep learning that Museums bring.

Keeper at the University of Nottingham Museum, Dr. Clare Pickersgill said:

“It was so wonderful to work with Carol. Her work is so observant and sensitive of both the collections and visitors. It helped us all to look at the collections in a new way.”

“I am really delighted that Carol is able to show more of the work she undertook here at the Museum. It is also very exciting to have our first collaborative Twitter Exhibition.”

Carol was the Museum’s first artist-in-residence, and during her time with the University of Nottingham Museum, she won a prestigious World Illustration Award in the Research and Knowledge Communication Category for her exhibition and book, Thinking Room. The WIA exhibition toured nationally and internationally, in Seoul and New York, as well as across the UK and was displayed in the Angear Visitor Centre at Nottingham Lakeside Arts.

The project had two outcomes – the first was a graphic novel book, and the second was an exhibition.

The exhibition showed 10 outsize graphic novel pages, which depicted a series of events that emanate outwards from the museum when a young girl inadvertently activates the Palimpsest Machine in the museum.

A range of the museum’s objects and artefacts come to life: for instance, the horseman of Margidunum gallops through the underground passage connecting Trent Building and Portland Building, pausing only to raid the vice-chancellor’s wine cellar; a mammoth clings to Trent Building Clock Tower; a Kraken rises from the lake and does battle with a Sphinx and so on.

It ends back in the museum when the girl turns the key again, and order appears to be restored, although with some small differences.

Find out more about Carol Adlam, and follow the University of Nottingham Museum on Twitter.

The University of Nottingham Museum is situated in Lakeside, and since January this year, has become part of the University’s Manuscripts and Special Collections within UoN Libraries.