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 – including a look ahead to upcoming features….

---

AT THE RWA

170 Annual Open Exhibition

Until 14 Jan 2024

The RWA’s renowned Annual Open Exhibition is now in its 170th year, and – as always – offers a stunning variety of work from emerging and established artists. This dynamic, varied and uplifting exhibition includes a stunning array of painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, installation and mixed media artworks, and is a showcase of some of the most exciting artists from across the country and beyond.

All work is for sale, making the Annual Open a perfect opportunity to discover new artists or invest in well-known names. You can browse – and buy – the artworks from your home online.

A selection panel assessed every entry and this year over 600 works made it into the final exhibition. The panel this year included Charmaine Watkiss and Meryl Ainslie together with RWA Academicians Fiona Robinson PRWA, Dallas Collins VPRWA, Lucy Austin RWA, Angela Lizon RWA and Karl Singporewala RWA.

More info here.

---

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Compiled by Sue Quirk and Laurel Smart

 

1) CHARLOTTE HUMPSTON: EXPLORING TEXTURE AND PLACE

2-9 DECEMBER, HERITAGE COURTYARD GALLERY & STUDIOS, WELLS, SOMERSET

Paintings and textiles: selected works. Charlotte trained as a theatre designer and worked extensively in London designing sets and costumes on productions that won several Edinburgh Fringe First Awards. On moving to Somerset, she was inspired by its natural beauty and painted landscapes. During her Fine Art Masters she was motivated to make political pieces that reflected the state of the Syrian refugees. Working in fibres and felt she made large-scale textiles works. She enjoys experimenting in many mediums, including sculpture, installations, film and photography. Charlotte Humpston’s work often reflects moods and atmospheres of places and events.

Website

 

2) JENNY ARRAN: ARTIST’S WALL

UNTIL 23 DECEMBER, PLOUGH ARTS CENTRE, GREAT TORRINGTON, DEVON

‘My work is inspired by the physical ‘bodies’ of nature, the sense of movement and entanglement and the contrasts of light and shade, stillness and energy. I will be showing a series of paintings on wood and canvas exploring my relationship to the landscape forms I’ve encountered since moving to North Devon.’

 Website

 

3) ‘GRUPPENAUSSTELLUNG’

UNTIL 1 JANUARY 2024, HAUSER & WIRTH, BRUTON, SOMERSET

A celebration of Hauser & Wirth’s Swiss heritage through a playful presentation of over 20 artists, including Phyllida Barlow, Martin Creed, Nicole Eisenman, Isa Genzken, Rodney Graham, Richard Hamilton, Mary Heilmann, Camille Henrot, Jenny Holzer, Richard Jackson, Rashid Johnson, Allison Katz, Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, Pipilotti Rist, Dieter Roth, Björn Roth, Mika Rottenberg, Anri Sala, Cindy Sherman, Roman Signer, Lorna Simpson, Alina Szapocznikow, Franz West and David Zink Yi.
The multidisciplinary exhibition is inspired by the notion of a traditional Kunsthalle, conceived as a place to showcase groundbreaking art and explore contemporary issues with a broad audience.

Website.

 

4) FRANCES GYNN RWA: DISAPPEARING MARKS

UNTIL 6 JANUARY, VELARDE GALLERY, KINGSBRIDGE, DEVON

Frances’ work is informed by environmental issues and humanity’s engagement with nature. Through drawings and paintings her practice reflects growing concerns over the effects of plastics in the ecosystem, and in particular deforestation and its influence on habitat loss and the decline of many precious species.
Process is an important part of her practice, in a way that echoes the characteristics of her subject. Layering oil paints and paint resists, she then rubs away paint with sandpaper, sometimes inviting the public to erase parts of her work as an interactive performance, in order to emphasise ideas of destruction and loss.

Website.

 

5) TERESA PEMBERTON: COASTAL COLOUR

UNTIL 6 JANUARY, PENWITH GALLERY, ST IVES, CORNWALL

‘Living by the coast I cannot help but study the sea and be inspired by its complex moods, its ever changing surprises and variety of colour. I strive to make sense of the space between the natural idea of landscape and the creative response to it. At a painterly level, the image may result in neither a literal nor an abstract expression; somewhere in between, a balance of truth and fiction. My painting process is oil on canvas, often with additional collage and drawing to add texture or detail. Scraping through layers of paint allows light and special effects of weather and sky to show through, as well as bright splashes of garden or wildflowers or everyday objects from the shoreline or interior spaces. In the end I hope that my paintings are alive and full of my passion for the excitement of colour.’

Website.

 

6) GAIL MASON: THE UNSEEN LANDSCAPE /
WHEN DREAMS CONFRONT REALITY: SURREALISM IN BRITAIN

UNTIL 7 JANUARY, VICTORIA ART GALLERY, BATH

‘GAIL MASON: THE UNSEEN LANDSCAPE Mason’s atmospheric works are built up in layers with transparent and opaque inks, while colour and bold mark-making set the emotional tone. Drawing from her imagination, Mason improvises and elaborates using variation and harmony. Speed and gesture are of great importance, combined with periods of reflection and careful editing.

SURREALISM IN BRITAIN: Surrealism originated in Paris in 1924, in the aftermath of the First World War while society was seeking to rebuild and make sense of an old order that had been ripped apart. Artists such as Eileen Agar, Roland Penrose and John Banting visited Paris to meet the Surrealists and went on to develop their own unique British Surrealist style, which you can explore in this fascinating exhibition. The show is from The Sherwin Family Collection, arguably the most significant collection of British Surrealism in private ownership. It encompasses the diversity of British Surrealism and European influences, with paintings, collage, drawings, ceramics and sculpture by artists such as Max Ernst, Julian Trevelyan, F.E. McWilliam and Man Ray.

Website.

 

7) JALA WAHID: CONFLAGRATION

UNTIL 13 JANUARY, JOHN HANSARD GALLERY, SOUTHAMPTON

Working with sculpture, film, sound, writing and installation, Jala Wahid makes work that touches on urgent issues in relation to identity, nationhood, diasporic living in the UK, intergenerational legacies and cultural traditions. Her work articulates the global and interregional politics that shape Kurdish identity and considers how politics and poetic expression interweave. She is interested in the emotive potential of archives, music, literature, dance, theatre and fashion to reveal the poetics and performativity of politics.

Conflagration presents a new body of work exploring the relationship between Britain and Kurdistan, through the lens of oil. The new body of work comprises three main elements and approaches oil as the symbolic material through which nationalism, statelessness, colonialism and Kurdish identity are analysed. It is grounded in the discovery of the Baba Gurgur oil well, following a time during which Britain and France politically occupied Mesopotamia, culminating in the formation of new nation states in the region’s oil resources.

Website.

8) DAVE WICKEN: BEYOND THE BEACH HUTS: STRANGE VISIONS OF LYME REGIS

UNTIL 28 JANUARY, LYME REGIS MUSEUM, DORSET

Dave Wicken shares the fruits of his surreal imagination as he portrays the Jurassic Coast in a style halfway between drawing and photography. “I have been shooting and processing my own photographs as well as producing pen and ink drawings for most of my life,” explains Dave, “but a few years ago it occurred to me that I could combine the two.” He still uses pen and ink in the traditional way, but adds colour and texture with software.
Inspired by the coastal scenery around Lyme Regis, Dave started wondering what may have inhabited the place long ago and what may occur there in the future. His image of a ten-times life-size blue whale, leaping from the sea and about to crush Lyme Regis under its bulk, was inspired by a nightmare he had when he was four years old, but his photomontage of Lyme slipping into a vast chasm in the ‘Great Landslip of 2039’ is hopefully pure fantasy.

Website.

9) OFELIA RODRÍGUEZ: TALKING IN DREAMS /
PLACE PORTRAIT: MULTI-MEDIA EXHIBITION

UNTIL 14 JANUARY, SPIKE ISLAND, BRISTOL

OFELIA RODRÍGUEZ: TALKING IN DREAMS: a major monographic exhibition by Colombian artist Ofelia Rodríguez (1946–2023). This extensive exhibition brings together a selection of over 70 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures made over the past five decades.
Influenced by memories of her native Barranquilla, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Rodríguez combines found objects and images rich in symbolism to construct humorous yet critical works that examine cultural identity and gender stereotypes. In her paintings, stuffed caimans, iguanas and lizards are suspended on colourful flat surfaces alongside representations of cacti and bodily fragments such as hands, wounded hearts and photocopies of mechanically altered ears.
PLACE PORTRAIT: A new Engagement commission by Anna Haydock-Wilson, developed over the past year in collaboration with Creative Youth Network alumni Caitlin Dawkes, Holly Humphries, Ryan Convery-Moroney and Tsipora St. Clair Knights. Place Portrait is a multimedia installation that examines the complexity of a specific area, as well as how people experience and perceive different places. The work explores Spike Island’s neighbourhood and includes interviews with local characters (both human and more-than-human), ambient sound, still and moving images, and found, reused and newly created materials.

Website.

10) GOLD: A GROUP EXHIBITION

UNTIL 20 JANUARY, CLOSE LTD, HATCH BEAUCHAMP, SOMERSET

An investigation of gold’s historical and iconographic use in the history of art. These works all reference the individual artist’s own practices and demonstrate the continued importance of gold as an inherently potent idea, material, colour and pigment in contemporary art. It can adopt meanings of value, status, position within a hierarchical structure, or the divine. In magical contexts it can be perceived as a material with inherent powerful qualities. Its symbolic nature has been a means of communication; between humans and a spiritual world. We see this in objects, in beliefs and perceptions of gold, and its significance in religious and magical traditions and ceremonies. Artists include Toni Davey, Jane Harris, Carali McCall, Anna Mossman, Katherine Perrins, Alice Temperley and Denise Webber.

OPEN BY APPOINTMENT: 2-22 DEC 2023 & 4-20 JAN 2024

Website.

---

 

LAST CHANCE TO SEE

• UNTIL 4 DECEMBER: REBECCA APPLEBY: MATTER New body of work is a personal interpretation of multiple connected themes, including a holistic view of the earth, its hemispheres, and the concept of Gaia. BURTON AT BIDEFORD, DEVON https://www.burtonartgallery.co.uk/exhibitions-activities/rebecca-appleby-matter/?portfolioCats=100

---

WATCH OUT FOR

• LEXI CHAMBERS, SAMANTHA FRANCIS, JO ELLIOTT, MANDI BAYKAA MURRAY & OTHERS: WILDLIFE ART EXHIBITION: UNTIL 15 JANUARY An exhibition of wildlife paintings SOUTH GATE GALLERY, EXETER Website.

---

 

The Friends of the RWA is an independent charity that supports the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol’s first art gallery. 

For just £35 a year Friends can make unlimited visits to RWA exhibitions and enjoy a host of other benefits, as well as making an important contribution to the arts in Bristol and the South West. Find out more and join up here.