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
RWA 172 Annual Open Exhibition
6 September – 28 December 2025
The RWA Annual Open Exhibition is one of the UK’s most prestigious open-submission exhibitions, welcoming artists at all stages of their careers. Now in its 172nd year, this highly anticipated event provides a platform for emerging and established artists to exhibit their work in the RWA’s stunning Grade II*-listed galleries.
Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space
24 January – 19 April 2026
Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space is a major art and science exhibition celebrating our enduring fascination with space. Bringing together contemporary and historic artists, the exhibition features an extraordinary range of work inspired by the cosmos.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Compiled by Sue Quirk and Laurel Smart
1) WINTER EXHIBITION: GROUP SHOW
1-31 DECEMBER, CHURCHGATE GALLERY, PORLOCK, SOMERSET
New original pieces by Tess Armitage, Sally Muir, Sue Onley, Chris Forsey, Louise Crabb, Rachel Sumner, Josse Davis, Sue Calcutt and Jonathan Walker, among others.
2) BRISTOL CLAY 2025: GROUP EXHIBITION
5 – 17 DECEMBER, CENTRESPACE, BRISTOL
Bristol Clay returns this December with its third group exhibition, showcasing twelve local ceramic artists and makers whose practices highlight the beauty, versatility, and artistry of contemporary ceramics. The exhibition celebrates the breadth of approaches within ceramic arts: from wheel-thrown vessels to hand-built sculpture, earthenware to stoneware. Each artist brings a unique voice, process, and perspective, creating an eclectic display that bridges ceramic traditions with contemporary innovation.
Bristol studios represented include Mudworks, Windmill Clay, Unit 42 Meriton Foundry, and Fishponds Pottery, reflecting the richness of the city’s ceramic communities.
Exhibiting Artists:
Lucy Cheminais, Emily Gibbard, Laura Grainger, Rhi Jarman, Kathryn Shorthouse, Mandy McDonald, Roisin Soares, Kim Teddy, Miranda Wells, Deborah Weymont, Pascale Wilson, Lucy Winch.
Preview: Friday 5 December, 6:00–8:30pm
3) WINTER EXHIBITION: FROME ART SOCIETY
UNTIL 10 DECEMBER, BLACK SWAN ARTS, FROME SOMERSET
Frome Art Society returns with their annual small paintings’ exhibition. The Society presents a lively and eclectic mix of work from their 170 members. The artists live in and around Frome and come together to paint, to learn and to share ideas and inspiration. The work on show reflects their diversity and includes oils, acrylics, watercolours and drawing in a variety of styles. Artists range from experienced professionals to beginners who may be showing their work for the first time.
4) ARTIZAN GALLERY TORBAY: TWO EXHIBITIONS UNTIL 24 DECEMBER
JO MCCHESNEY: CAPTURING MOMENTS IN TIME
SCULPTURE SEASON – AUTUMN: GROUP SHOW
JO MCCHESNEY: CAPTURING MOMENTS IN TIME: This exhibition brings together works that demonstrate Jo’s constant source of inspiration, the natural world, with trees, weather and water a recurrent theme. From the changing light of dense woodland, to starkly lit trees against a bright sky, her work often focuses on transient moments in time, such as ripples on water, or drawing attention to unnoticed fleeting happenings, the tiny explosions and drift of seed heads, carried by air currents. She uses collected drawings and juxtaposes these with memories of time and place. Often the images are not fully realised at the stage of carving and can evolve and change through the process of the cutting. Each print is burnished by hand which allows the soft texture of the wood to emerge.
SCULPTURE SEASON – AUTUMN: This exhibition offers a refined exploration of contemporary sculpture. This Autumn Season, features the work of Becca Brown, Bev Knowlden, Tracy Nicholls, Alison West, Gesche Buecker and Jack Richardson. Each artist brings a distinct approach to sculpture, reflecting a deep engagement with form, material, and conceptual exploration. From intimate, hand-crafted sculptures and Jewellery to large-scale installations, the Autumn Season offers a comprehensive view of the sculptural landscape, inviting visitors to appreciate the intricacies and possibilities of the medium. The works displayed in this season reflect the varied ways in which artists engage with human experience, nature, and the complex relationships between objects and space.
5) JO LATHWOOD: DOWN THE HATCH
UNTIL 11 JANUARY, EAST QUAY, WATCHET, SOMERSET
Down the Hatch explores the history and role of women in British pub culture from a queer perspective. Pubs have long been central to communities across the British Isles as lively, intimate spaces that shape the character of our towns and villages. In this newly-commissioned body of work, Jo Lathwood examines the origins of brewing, pub names, and signs, uncovering the hidden narratives behind these familiar symbols.
A key inspiration for the exhibition is the history of the alewives, the pioneering female brewers of medieval Britain. Often depicted in pointed hats, these women were the original alchemists -skilled brewers long before the profession became industrialised and male-dominated, after which their contributions were largely erased from history.
6) DREAMS OF THE EVERYDAY: PAINTINGS BY WINIFRED NICHOLSON & ANDREW CRANSTON
UNTIL 11 JANUARY, HOLBURNE MUSEUM, BATH
This compelling exhibition arrives in the south, having opened at The Pier in Orkney in June. It brings together the paintings of Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981) and Andrew Cranston (b. 1969), curated by the designer and collector Jonathan Anderson, in collaboration with Andrew Cranston and the gallerist Richard Ingleby.
The display explores the connections and contrasts in paintings by Nicholson and Cranston, many of which share a delight in ordinary, often domestic, realities – drawing on daily-life, memory and imagination, and incorporating figures, interiors and glimpses of nature. Both artists’ practices are at once rooted in the real world, while going beyond conventionality and the commonplace to evoke a sense of non-physical, sometimes mystical, and occasionally visionary, realities.
The two painters, though distanced by time and place, are connected by their commitment to a kind of painting that values intimacy over showmanship. The earliest and most recent works in the exhibition are separated by a century – and whilst Nicholson often travelled from her base at Bankshead in Cumbria to paint in Cornwall, Paris, Greece, and on the west coast of Scotland – Cranston, originally from Hawick, has resolutely remained living and working in Glasgow. Despite such disparity in circumstances, and their distinctly different voices, their works sit well in each other’s company, and in presenting their paintings together, the exhibition seeks to reveal something new about both.
7) NOUR JAOUDA: MATTERS OF TIME
UNTIL 11 JANUARY, SPIKE ISLAND, BRISTOL
This is the first institutional solo exhibition by Libyan artist Nour Jaouda (b.1997, Libya). Jaouda’s new commission at Spike Island will be her most ambitious to date and continues her ongoing exploration of the fluidity of cultural identity.
Jaouda’s multi-layered textile works traverse the languages of painting, sculpture and installation to produce ‘landscapes of memory’. The forms, colours and motifs within her intricately textured surfaces gesture towards different encounters across time and space, drawing on the artist’s childhood in Libya and experiences of living between Cairo and London. Organic and geometric forms reveal themselves within her layered topographies, evoking images both real and imagined: spectral presences and absences within the shadows of memory.
Jaouda’s new installation for Spike Island takes inspiration from the ‘Khayamiya’, an intricately patterned textile that is created through the ancient craft of appliqué and applied to the interior of tents. Functioning as both ornament and shelter, the ‘Khayamiya’ tent often serves as a temporary ‘third space’, erected within Cairo’s dense urban areas for moments of gathering, such as funerals, Ramadan rituals and Eid celebrations. For Jaouda, the intimate tentlike environment she creates within Spike Island’s monumental gallery is also a memorial space, where viewers are invited to come together, sit and reflect. Drawing on memories of botanical landscapes, sewn onto the tent are deconstructed shapes of indigenous plants and trees that have once been uprooted. Within this sheltered retreat, Jaouda constructs a space to mourn an absent landscape.
8) AMY SHINER: DON’T TELL ANYONE
16 JANUARY – 1 FEBRUARY, HOURS, BRISTOL
Amy Shiner is an artist, Creative Facilitator and Intuitive Psychology Coach. After the loss of her father, Amy turned to Creative Journaling as a way to heal and process her grief. This practice helped her rediscover her creativity in a therapeutic and meaningful way and she continues to exhibit her paintings while leading arts in health projects and Creative Journaling workshops, sharing her passion for self-expression and the healing power of art and inviting others to explore their own creativity as a path to healing, growth, and connection.
This exhibition reflects that journey of vulnerability and rediscovery, where journal pages grew into larger, braver works and, finally, into paintings. Shared in the hope that it encourages you to deepen your own connection — with creativity, with yourself, and with the light that shines within us all.
Creative Journaling helps us to tap into our innate creativity which might otherwise be hard to reach. It is a safe place to connect with ourselves, and a simple tool that we can take anywhere to help support our health and wellbeing.
Launch event Friday 16th January 6-9 pm. Open to the public Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th 11am-5 pm. Thereafter by arrangement until February 1st free.
9) ROCK PAPER SCISSORS: GROUP SHOW
29 NOVEMBER – 20 DECEMBER 2025 & 8 – 17 JANUARY 2026, CLOSE LTD, HATCH BEAUCHAMP, SOMERSET
Drawing inspiration from the innocence of childhood play and the universal game of the playground, the exhibition explores the elemental relationship between hand, material, and imagination. Just as the game rock, paper, scissors distills decision-making into simple gestures, the works on view embrace pared-back processes and raw materials, uncovering beauty and meaning in the handmade and the natural.
Artists in the exhibition work with elemental forms and familiar matter, stone, wood, fibre, pigment, feathers and found fragments, transforming them into new expressions of texture, balance, and touch. The title evokes a world of playfulness and tactility, reminding us of the enduring creativity sparked by simple acts and materials.
By foregrounding both nature and making, Rock Paper Scissors celebrates the imaginative leap from playground games to artistic creation, affirming the timeless resonance of creating something from almost nothing.
Artists include: Kate MccGwire, Ted Rogers, Susanna Bauer, Alice Freeman, Anya Paintsil, Darren Appiagyei, Hana Moazzeni (Previously Shahnavaz), Nicholas Lees, Dean Coates, Peter Randall-Page, Amy Stephens, Hew Locke.
10) NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE & JEAN TINGUELY: MYTHS & MACHINES
UNTIL 1 FEBRUARY, HAUSER & WIRTH, BRUTON, SOMERSET
Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925 – 1991) are reunited in a major site-wide takeover at Hauser & Wirth Somerset in collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. The first exhibition dedicated to both artists in the UK illustrates Saint Phalle and Tinguely’s visionary artistic output and enduring creative collaboration over three decades.
The exhibition takes place as part of the centenary celebrations of Tinguely’s birth. To mark this occasion, his innovative and playful oeuvre will be honoured internationally with a range of exhibitions and events.
Two emblematic figures of contemporary art, Saint Phalle and Tinguely defied conventional artmaking and were fuelled with rebellion, in both life and art. The exhibition features unseen works on paper and art décor by Saint Phalle, alongside her shooting paintings and monumental open-air sculptures. Iconic kinetic machines by Tinguely range from the 1950s to the final year of his life, in addition to multifaceted collaborative works made by the duo throughout the 1980s.
WATCH OUT FOR
- BATH ANNUAL OPEN 18 OCTOBER – 10 JANUARY 120th Open Exhibition, open to non-members, is held in the Victoria Art Gallery, BATH https://www.bsaorg.uk/open-exhibitions
- PRINCE OF THE ROCKS: JMW TURNER AND THE AVON GORGE UNTIL 11 JANUARY Four rare watercolours painted during Turner’s first visit to the city in 1791, when aged just 16 he explored the Avon Gorge and earned the nickname “Prince of the Rocks”. BRISTOL MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, BRISTOL https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/bristol-museum-and-art-gallery/prince-of-the-rocks/
The Floating Circle 