News – Page 3 – Public art at the University of Bristol

IN/FINITE exhibition at Liberty House, Stokes Croft

Posted on 19th January 202221st January 2022 by martha.crean

Liam Taylor-West Composer and creator of immersive artworks, has been working with the School of Mathematics as part of a Create-React residency, since August 2020. During the residency, Liam has worked closely with mathematicians to understand active research in a number of diverse and complex areas, including algebraic number theory, the geometry of quasicrystals, fractals and mathematical forest fire models. His latest audio-visual compositions are inspired by these topics and often employ underlying rules that are directly drawn from mathematical concepts.

The work he has produced has culminated in IN/FINITE: Order in the Unknown – an exhibition of music and art, which is open to the public at Liberty House, Stokes Croft, from January 19 until end of January 2022.

Our First Year Heard: online exhibition

Posted on 18th December 202118th February 2022 by martha.crean

Image: Snatched Expectations Beck Ilogahlum

A BBC article and subsequent broadcasts on BBC Points West have highlighted Our First Year Heard, an online exhibition by University of Bristol first year medical students. The students, whose first year took place during the Covid-19 pandemic, have taken part in a form of ‘natural experiment’ to explore their experiences of the Pandemic through artmaking. Viewers are encouraged to contribute online comments to enrich this interactive exhibition.

Our First Year Heard is an online exhibition that showcases drawings, photos, digital art and poems created during the pandemic and which explore issues such as isolation, imposter syndrome and mental health.

The exhibition is platformed on Out of Our Heads, a website which is home to a variety of projects exploring the interface of medicine and the arts. Created mainly by medical students at the University, but also by patients and doctors, the artworks on the site ‘take a fresh look at the vast medical enterprise’.

A Mural for Social Change

Posted on 17th December 202121st January 2022 by martha.crean

View of mural on external walls of Easton Community Centre

On 10th December 2021, on Human Rights Day 2021 and part of Disability History Month, a new mural was inaugurated on Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street, BS5 6AW. The mural brings together the messages and experiences of Deaf, Disabled and asylum-seeking people living in the Bristol area. The mural is dedicated to Kamil Ahmad, a disabled asylum seeker who was murdered in Bristol in 2016.

The project was coordinated by Dr Rebecca Yeo, senior research associate in SPAIS, working on issues of disability and forced migration. She explained ‘the disabled people’s movement has long argued that the system itself is disabling. The new mural highlights the particularly disabling impact of the UK asylum system and the urgent need for solidarity.’

Artist Andrew Bolton collaborated with Yeo. He created the mural design, bringing together messages and images contributed by people with lived experience of disability and / or forced migration. This included activists, students and academics, local authority employees, refugees, asylum seekers, homeless people and people with many of those experiences combined.

The mural includes an image of Kamil Ahmad which he contributed to a mural with Yeo and Bolton in 2012. He is seen holding his head in despair at the injustices he was facing in the UK. The mural is designed to build understanding and solidarity in his honour.

2021 Autumn Art Lecture Series: ‘ Art in the Time of Covid 19’

Posted on 1st November 202119th January 2022 by martha.crean

This year’s Autumn Art Lectures – brought to you by the University of Bristol Faculty of Arts in partnership with Bristol Ideas – are themed around ‘Art in the Time of COVID-19’. This series of lectures brings together contemporary artists, scholars and museum professionals to reflect on the impact of pandemics – both in the past and in the present – on the ways in which we create, engage with, and think about art and art-making.

During the series, we will consider the longer history of art and diseases, the ways in which contemporary artists have reckoned with and worked through the COVID-19 pandemic, and the implications and new possibilities that opened up as we were forced to reimagine the form and function of our public collections amid lockdowns and enforced closures. We will look to the past – from the Black Death to the Third Plague – to provide context to our present as we begin to imagine what the future might look like for artists, collections and the publics that they serve.

Events are taking place online on 18 November, 2 December and 9 December. See Bristol Ideas site for more info

Royal Fort Gardens receives Green Flag Award 2021

Posted on 18th October 202118th October 2021 by martha.crean

We are delighted to announce that we have again been awarded the Green Flag for the Royal Fort Garden as one of the country’s best parks. The Green Flag Award is the international quality mark for parks and green spaces and is celebrating its Silver Jubilee, the Royal Fort Garden is one of 2127 celebrating the success today.

After 18 months that have seen our parks and green spaces play a vital role for people through lockdowns as a place to relax, exercise and meet friends and family safely, the news that Royal Fort Garden has achieved the Green Flag Award is testament to the hard work and dedication of the team that make this a great space that everyone can enjoy.

Bristol gifted garden crowned Best in Show at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Posted on 16th October 202116th February 2022 by martha.crean

Image credits Grant Associates and photographer Alister Thorpe

Image courtesy Grant Associates. Photographer: Alison Thorpe.

The Guangzhou China: Guangzhou Garden that was crowned the best garden at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, taking home the coveted Best in Show prize, has been gifted by Guangzhou to Bristol and will be rebuilt at the University of Bristol’s Botanic Garden. Bristol has been twinned with Guangzhou since 2001.The Guangzhou China: Guangzhou Garden will be rebuilt at the Botanic Garden in the coming months and will be unveiled in early Summer 2022, in the 21st anniversary year of the sister city relationship between Bristol and Guangzhou.

More information: University press release

We Are Still Here: Bristol Photo Festival

Posted on 4th October 202121st January 2022 by martha.crean

We Are Still Here photography exhibition image

‘If there is no image, there is no identity’

A photography exhibition on College Green focuses on individuals affected by HIV/AIDS and their living spaces. The project aims to counter a decline in visibility of the HIV/AIDS community by inviting the audience in to these personal spaces, which have been curated to better the mental health of their inhabitants.

This interdisciplinary research project is a collaboration between Dr Adrian Flint (University of Bristol, SPAIS), Mareike Günsche (Photographer/Educator and Lecturer of photography at the State University of Arts, Mongolia) and Martin Burns (Writer, HIV/AIDS activist and equality advocate). This exhibition has been produced as a result of the Bristol Photo Festival commissioning programme in collaboration with the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute.

Dates

5 – 30 October 2021
Tuesday – Friday 11.30 – 16.30

Location

The Vestibules, Bristol
City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR, United Kingdom

Cai Burton mural marks global fight against meningitis

Posted on 27th September 202121st January 2022 by martha.crean

A new mural, by Bristol artist Cai Burton, has been installed at the University of Bristol’s Cantock Steps this weekend to mark the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Roadmap to Defeat Meningitis, which will be officially launched on 28th September.

Commissioned by Bristol-based charity Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF), the 12-metre mural is located near the Biomedical Sciences building in recognition of the research conducted at the university towards defeating meningitis.

UK Premier of Luke Jerram’s Mars July 2021

Posted on 28th May 202120th August 2021 by Jez Butler

Note: From Monday 26 July to Sunday 1 August 2021, the University of Bristol will be hosting the UK premiere of Luke Jerram’s Mars exhibition in the iconic Great Hall, Wills Memorial Building. The exhibition, a free ticketed event, will be open to the public on the Saturday and Sunday. Book tickets.

Emma Blake Morsi and Cabot institute unveil COP26 Billboard campaign

Posted on 28th May 202120th January 2022 by Jez Butler

Artist and multi-disciplinary producer Emma Blake Morsi has been commissioned by the Cabot Institute for the Environment to create a series of billboards and posters, which were exhibited across Bristol in July 2021.

In November 2021, more than 190 global leaders will gather in the UK city of Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, to accelerate action towards ambitious targets aimed at cutting carbon emissions and safeguarding the world’s future.

Leading experts from the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute for the Environment will be contributing to the discussions and a campaign has been launched in the city this month to bring the important issues at stake to a wider audience.

The campaign designs are the brainchild of Emma Blake Morsi, aged 24, who has created a series of evocative billboards and posters, currently emblazoned across Bristol, to highlight how innovative, pioneering research holds the key to unlocking such pressing problems, including access to water and sanitation, the effects of climate change on drylands and sustainable food sources.