Art Exhibitions in Bristol: Spike Island 2018 Programme
Posted on: 22 Jan 2018Spike Island is an internationally renowned centre for the production and presentation of contemporary art and design in Bristol. It houses a gallery, a café and a host of working spaces for artists, designers and creative businesses. It is also a vibrant hub for debate offering the chance for the audience and visitors to engage directly with artists and creative process through participation and discussion.
Spike Island offers a year round, high quality programme of exhibitions and events to promote it's vision of positioning art centrally in society. The centre collaborates with a wide community of artists and designers, local and regional partners, international institutions, museums and universities to foster a dynamic and versatile environment for all.
Here's the exhibition line-up for the year:
17 Febuary to 15th April 2018
Preview: Friday 16th February 6-9pm
Iman Issa
Material for 2018
The work of Iman Issa explores the relationships between history, memory, language and objects. Working across sculpture, text, video, photography and sound, Issa questions the possibility of addressing the collective through individual experience. She is interested in how forms can carry personal and political significance, often making reference to places, figures or events that have a personal resonance.
For her exhibition at Spike Island, Issa presents Material (2010-12) in a series of ‘displays’ that question the function of public sculpture and monuments. The series references existing public monuments, stripped back to their essential elements and reimagined into other forms, triggering a chain of associations that go beyond the original object and its meanings.
5th May to 8th July
Preview: Friday 4th May 6-9pm
Alex Cecchetti
At the Gates of the Music Palace
Alex Cecchetti is an artist, poet and choreographer. Over the last decade, he has developed a unique practice which he characterises as the art of avoidance, where representation and concealment go hand in hand with the tactical and the poetic, the visual and the material. His work often begins with a poem which is transformed into an object, a performance or a situation, focusing on how the construction of a narrative can be experienced both physically and emotionally. Cecchetti’s exhibition at Spike Island, At the Gates of the Music Palace, brings together performance, drawing, painting, sculpture and sound installation, turning the gallery into a three-dimensional concert in which visitors are invited to contribute to the musical score as they make their way through an unexpected sensory pathway.
5th May to 8th July
Preview: Friday 4th May 6-9pm
Zoe Paul
La Perma-Perla Kraal Emporium
Zoe Paul works primarily with sculpture, textile and drawing to explore the character of domestic spaces, both in architectural and social terms. Focusing on the point when the threshold between interior and exterior disappear, her work examines the relationship of tradition and perception around the value of an object according to time and context. The materials she often uses are clay, weaving and drawing, techniques that require almost no technology.
Paul’s exhibition is an immersive installation that invited visitors to sit around a long table and make clay beads. A collaborative effort which sees humans becoming the work whilst creating it.
4 to 7 May
Opening night: Friday 4 May, 6pm till late
Open Studios
Spike Island Open Studios will showcase artists and tenants to open their doors for the public to see their working environment and learn about what they do. Visitors get the chance to see how the building has transformed from a former tea packing factory into a creative hub, home to hundreds of artists, designers and creative businesses. Expect family friendly activities, tours, talks, performances and pop-ups by some of Bristol’s best street food traders.
Summer 2018
Paul Simon Richards
Quasi-Monte Carlo
Working mainly with spoken word, performance and film, Richards’ work draws together immersive narratives that incorporate elements of spectacular entertainment. Moments of enlightened consciousness is explored through the every day mundane task.
For his exhibition at Spike Island, Richards presents Quasi-Monte Carlo a new film work based on anxieties about preparing for a holiday. It works by repeatedly drawing from random sequences of data to simulate the physical properties of light. The equation was originally devisedin the late 19th century in and around the Monte Carlo casino, where Richards has filmed.
To find out more about events at Spike Island click here.
Article by:
Hannah recently graduated with a degree in English with Writing. She is an avid writer, freelancer and creative. She is currently writing her first full-length novel and a collection of poetry. Always out and about in Bristol's music scene, she attends music events on a weekly basis.
