How Bonington Gallery's Weird Hope Engines is embracing and expanding the culture of tabletop roleplaying games

Game on...

Located in the heart of Nottingham Trent University’s School of Art & Design, Bonington Gallery is a cultural hub for the city - one that is turning its attention to the ever-growing world of tabletop and roleplay gaming.

We hear from ‘Weird Hope Engines’ curators David Blandy, Rebecca Edwards and Jamie Sutcliffe all about the upcoming exhibition, the importance of the RPG community and Nottingham’s role in all things gaming.

‘Weird Hope Engines’ has been described as “the first exhibition of its kind”. What makes it so?

‘Weird Hope Engines’ is looking at the place where art and tabletop roleplay meet. There have been exhibitions highlighting artists working with games before, but none that have put those artists on an equal footing with people who come from gaming, and those making art for games, particularly outside of mainstream game publishing. Many of the artists in the show come from what is sometimes called the OSR (Old School Renaissance/Revival/Roleplay), sometimes self-taught, often self-published, and based across the world. We have artists from Malaysia, New Zealand and North America in the show, alongside several artists from the UK.

The other element that is unique about this exhibition is the fact that we’re commissioning and showing tabletop games that visitors can actually play, that are both fun and make you think about the world in a different way. Laurie O’Connel’s lets you imagine life as a serf in mediaeval times, trying to gain freedom, and Chris Bissette’s places you inside a nightmarish Kafka-esque bureaucracy, redacting stories to comply to accepted narratives, or writing your own as a form of resistance.

The exhibition focuses on embracing the culture around tabletop roleplaying games. What is it about this culture that makes it worth celebrating?

The tabletop roleplay scene is a constant well of creativity, an international scene where people have made connections across the world, across cultures, creating a meeting place for all sorts of alternative lifestyles and alternative ways of seeing the world. It’s also a scene that embraces technology, meeting through social media, blogs, YouTube and Twitch streaming, yet has at its heart the simple connection of people talking in a room together. Tabletop roleplay offers a version of an analogue culture outside of the screen — there’s an intimacy and immediacy to that.

It feels like more and more people are embracing this culture over time, as tabletop gaming continues to grow in popularity. Why do you think there has been such an explosion in interest in recent years?

We think that there has been an increasing dissatisfaction with both screen-based media and the stories told through mainstream programming. Tabletop roleplay allows people to devise their own stories at the same time as having a moment to truly be together, talking and laughing as they explore alternative worlds.

Several cultural phenomena came together to form this current roleplay renaissance, which all started in the mid-2010’s. The programme ‘Stranger Things’ reminded people that Dungeons and Dragons exists (and can be very fun). Dungeons and Dragons released a more accessible fifth edition. And “Actual Play” video streaming of people playing tabletop games started to gain increased popularity, with shows like ‘Critical Role’ and ‘Dimension 20’ gaining large audiences, which helped showed people how to run these games themselves.

Alongside this interest, small creators started to find niche audiences through platforms such as itch.io and Kickstarter, allowing them to turn passionate hobbies into an actual way to earn a living.

Fundamentally, playing games like this are incredibly fun and easy to get into, the only barrier being how to start and how to find a group. The internet has broken down those barriers.

Andrew Walter - Boggins

Yet gaming has obviously been important for a lot of people for a long time, and the exhibition includes elements demonstrating Nottingham’s essential role in this. What are some highlights that have put Notts on the map?

We had hoped to include a number of elements from Nottingham’s rich history, but sadly the archives and estates were unable to help us in the time we had to put the show together. But Nottingham is integral to the history of tabletop roleplay in this country and worldwide, with Games Workshop’s Citadel Miniatures being the most prominent of many independent foundries based in the area.

We’ve managed to involve the local scene through Alex Huntley of Warp Miniatures, a family business based around Nottingham, and Curtis Fell of Ramshackle Games, who’ll both be discussing the history of miniature production during our talks programme on Saturday 22nd March. In some ways, these guys are emblematic of the rich history that’s come to define the midlands as the “lead belt” of miniature production. We’ve also included original art by Melsonian Arts Council artists Andrew Walter and Shuyi Zhang whose work for the RPG Troika often sits alongside the work of legendary Games Workshop artist Tony Hough, so there are links and allusions to that history throughout the show. Come along to hear more.

At the same time, ‘Weird Hope Engines’ also looks to keep things moving forward and evolving through providing “a testing site for the development of new worlding experiences”. How will this work in practice and who would you encourage to get involved?

We want to get everyone and anyone imagining worlds, through the playable games included in the show. There are five newly commissioned games that you can play in the exhibition, all designed to be easy to play for everyone, even if you’ve never played a game like this before. The five new games are all by artists and tabletop roleplay designers, including Zedeck Siew, Angela Washko, Chris Bissette, Laurie O’Connel and David Blandy.

Some are solo experiences, such as David Blandy’s ‘Our Place, No Place’ (2025). You follow a series of prompts to imagine a hopeful future world through drawing a map, a reimagining of where you are now, 200 years in the future. Or Zedeck Siew’s ‘Crocodile, Eating’ (2025) which is a very different type of solo game that players may not be used to. It involves a large rock garden in the shape of a crocodile, and invites players to read poetic prompts delivered via a wireless printer, which they then tear up and “offer” to the giant creature.

Another game you can sit down and play as group is Angela Washko’s ‘The Council Is in Session’ (2025). You sit around a custom table outfitted with electronics, embedded sculptural glass displays, resin polyhedral dice sets (made by the artist). The players perform a scenario together in which they reimagine how a community is run while responding to musical cues and written prompts, finding new communities and unlikely allies amidst a large scale catastrophe.

‘Weird Hope Engines’ is running at Bonington Gallery from Sat 22 Mar 2025 - Sat 10 May 2025.

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