The best art exhibitions coming up in Bristol and the Westcountry – selected by the Friends of the RWA…
Here’s our pick of the best art exhibitions and events happening in and around Bristol and the south west in the month ahead – including a look ahead to upcoming features….
AT THE RWA
Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City
Until 13 Aug 2023, Main galleries
Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, is a national touring exhibition curated for the Arts Council Collection by Turner Prize-winning artist and cultural activist Lubaina Himid CBE.
This exhibition of over 60 works, including some by Bristol-based artists, presents a wide array of modern and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, photography and film from both the Arts Council Collection and artists’ studios.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Compiled by Sue Quirk and Laurel Smart
1) CREATORS EXHIBITION: GROUP SHOW
1-31 AUGUST, CREATE CENTRE, BRISTOL
Following on from a highly successful Friends of the RWA exhibition in May, the Create Centre Gallery is hosting a group exhibition of art by the people who work there. The Create Centre is an eco-hub that houses around twenty different organisations, as well as Create employees, all helping to keep the building a safe and happy place to work. This exhibition will be a unique opportunity to showcase the diverse creative talents of people who work at the Create Centre. This is the first exhibition of its kind, with no fixed theme. A diverse array of work will be on display including collage, photography, painting, and embroidery. The exhibition will be open to the public for the whole of August, Mondays to Fridays, 9 am until 5pm. There will be originals and prints available to purchase directly from the artists and we are asking that 20% be donated to one of our suggested charities, or to a charity of the artist’s choice. The suggested charities are The Underfall Yard Trust and The Avon Wildlife Trust.
2) CLIFTON ARTS MEMBERS SUMMER EXHIBITION
UNTIL 6 AUGUST, CLIFTON ARTS, VICTORIA METHODIST CHURCH, BRISTOL
Following on from the success of the Spring Exhibition 2023, Clifton Arts are holding a summer exhibition. The Open Exhibition is now bi-annual and will reappear next year. There is a lower submission price and an increased number of artworks. There will be no theme, no selection and previously submitted work can be entered.
Website. #cliftonartsclub
3) CORINNA WAGNER: TERRAOCEANUS
UNTIL 12 AUGUST, THELMA HULBERT, HONITON, DEVON
This exhibition explores our relationship to rivers and seas, and to the edge lands around them. Artworks will feature the built and natural environment, ruined and rewilded. There are abandoned piers and once-grand seaside hotels of the Southwest, northern industrial ruins, and lakeshore properties ravaged by forest fires in North America.
These landscapes speak about ‘solastalgia’: a sadness and anxiety about environmental damage to homes, land, rivers and seas. But they also speak about possibility: there are rewilded and resurrected landscapes here. Even in the most ravaged places, biodiversity recovery is possible when humans stand back, when ruins are allowed rebirth. Wagner’s practice reflects this emphasis on renewability: she works in cyanotype and plant-based anthotype, prints on mulberry paper and cotton rag, processes images in seawater and sand, paints with oils made from reclaimed waste and with natural beeswax. These layered images, and her handmade photobooks, capture the haunting and ever-changing nature of coastlines, riverbanks and edgelands.
Website. #thelmahulbertgallery
4) GENIUS LOCI: GROUP EXHIBITION
UNTIL 19 AUGUST, BRIDPORT ARTS CENTRE, DORSET
Featuring paintings by Katie Barons and Luke Mintowt-Czyz, tutors at Arts University Bournemouth, and a video/sound installation by Eden Alarcon, Sophie Baudains, Jovita Bhengra, Jessica Brauner, Lauren Nulty, Indra Nyquist, Taylor Stankowski and Richard Waring, this exhibition reveals how ten artists explore their sensations of landscape.
During an artist residency period whilst studying on the BA (Hons) Fine Art Degree at Arts University Bournemouth, in collaboration with their tutor Richard Waring, a group of artists worked on a contemporary art project called Sonic Camouflage. Sonic Camouflage responds to an ancient language, the Hammer Whistle or sfyria, invented to disguise the human voice as bird song in order to evade capture by an enemy. This form of communication is still in use on the Greek island of Evia and is listed as critically endangered by UNESCO. The results of this project are featured in this exhibition in the form of a video/sound installation.
Website. #bridportarts
5) ANDY HARPER: THE MANDALAS
UNTIL 28 AUGUST, ANIMA MUNDI, ST IVES, CORNWALL
Despite ancient and numerous theological associations, a mandala is traditionally seen as representative of reality, as lived. It is often a representation of wholeness and a model to aid reflection on the organizational structure of life itself. A form of diagram that shows our relation to the infinite that extends beyond and within various minds & bodies from the micro to the macro. The microcosm / macrocosm analogy refers to a perennial view which posited a structural similarity between ‘us’ and the ‘cosmos’ as a whole where truths about the nature of the cosmos may be inferred from truths about our human nature, and vice versa.
Although there may be a relationship between these theoretical standpoints and the works exhibited, Harper has not been deliberately led by them. Instead, it is through the act of praxis, where thought and intuition meet through the hand, that discovery can occur. He states that “there is a system to the paintings production, but this network of marks and calculations have to be capable of catching a poetry that creates its own self-contained world, a world within a world…a cycle within a cycle.” I am reminded of Isaac Asimov who wrote in his book ’Second Foundation’ that “a circle has no end.”
Website. #animamundigallery
6) SANCTUARY STUDIO & GALLERY, SUMMER SHOW
UNTIL 1 SEPTEMBER, NEWNHAM ON SEVERN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
A show by four women painters whose works are inspired by the landscape. Featuring Sharon Harvey, Sylvia Wadsley, Kirsten Elswood & Bron Jones.
Kirsten Elwood’s paintings are inspired by the rugged coast and moorland of the Penwith Peninsula, and by the rural landscapes of her childhood in Devon. Through considered mark-making, she makes works that respond the immediate experience and memory of ‘place.’
Sharon Harvey’s paintings are inspired by the natural world, from botanical forms to the rivers, forests, wide horizons and rugged coastline of the England’s beautiful landscape. Her new collections explore the rolling hills and open skies of rural Gloucestershire, expressing the changing colours and rich textures of a county on the river estuary, reflected in endlessly shifting clouds.
Bron Jones lives and works in the beautiful setting of Carmarthenshire. Her work aims to capture what she calls ‘fleeting, but magical’ moments in nature. Typically working on several paintings at once, she builds layers of texture using acrylic pigments and other materials, glazing, scratching and sanding back surfaces to expose subtleties of texture and colour.
Sylvia Wadsley is a contemporary landscape painter living and working near Stroud. Her landscape painting is a reflection of her emotional relationship with nature, from the beauty she sees in the Gloucestershire landscape and the serenity she finds spending time in nature, to her concerns about the impact of the climate crisis.
Website. #thesanctuary_gallery
7) THE SELF, ART OF SELF-PERCEPTION: GROUP SHOW
UNTIL 10 SEPTEMBER, VIEW GALLERY, BRISTOL
Five artists examine what it means to be themselves, viewed from internal reflection and as perceived by others. The exhibition is the antithesis of social media, where people often show how they want to be perceived and hide the real self. The art in THE SELF is raw, authentic, created from the inside out.
The visual imagery may be disturbing and difficult to look at. Some may see beauty in darkness, others feel uplifted in seeing resolution. We may allow the art to help process our own issues or simply enjoy the role of observer. Featuring: Ananda Kuhn, Ceinwen Birrell, Aaron Lock, Teresa Wells and Max Middlewood.
LAST CHANCE TO SEE
- UNTIL 5 AUGUST: WANDER_LAND Exhibition by Royal Society of Sculptors members. TREMENHEERE, PENZANCE, CORNWALL https://www.tremenheere.co.uk/exhibition/royal-society-of-sculptors-wander_land/
WATCH OUT FOR
- PRIVATE VIEW FOR THE ART EXHIBITION OF GAYNOR LEVERETT-JAQUES AND RACHAEL JOHNSON: 8 AUGUST 2-6PM Unique chance to see this exhibition and meet the artists. THE SQUARE CLUB, BRISTOL https://www.thesquareclub.com/events/private-view-for-the-art-exhibition-of-gaynor-leverett-jaques-and-rachael-johnson/
- WORLD OF INTERIORS: MIXED EXHIBITION UNTIL 18 AUGUST Exhibition featuring work by Hugo Grenville; Victoria Jinivizian; Peter Lloyd-Jones, Alex Lowery; Mungo Powney; Ceramics by the Chelsea Potter. DAVID SIMON CONTEMPORARY, CASTLE CARY, SOMERSET
- https://www.davidsimoncontemporary.com/exhibitions/36-world-of-interiors-hugh-buchanan-hugo-grenville-victoria-jinivizian-peter-lloyd-jones/overview/
- ROSE PETTIT & KELVIN JENKINS: FACES/SPACES #3, 18-23 AUGUST The third show together features new work from Rose Pettit (ceramics) and Kelvin Jenkins (collages). Private View: Friday 18th August, 6 pm CENTRESPACE, BRISTOL
- https://www.centrespace.org.uk/whats-on/faces/spaces3
THREE DAY EVENT
- 4-6 AUGUST Temperings Exhibition: Group Show Features: Astrid Foreman, Byway Design, Emily Krainc, Georgina Thornton-Parr, Maja Beattie, Nicola Preston, Sophie Rae, Stephen Quick, Winged Fox, When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Fridge MUSIC ROOM, ASHTON COURT MANSION, BRISTOL https://artspace.uk/events/
The Floating Circle 
Thank you for this. Went down to the beautiful Bridport and saw the exhibition!
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