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Alongside a dazzling festival and music line-up, there’s an incredible variety of arts and culture experiences on offer this #SummerInBristol. Many of the exhibitions, installations and activities spark wonder and joy as well as getting you to think about big ideas and a greener future. Here are 11 highlights not to miss.
Wake The Tiger (Opens 30 July)
There’s an inspiring new world to discover at Wake The Tiger, the first ever Amazement Park®. Blurring the lines between experiential art gallery, interactive theme park and detailed film set, follow a multi-layered labyrinth of creative environments and fantastical wonders. The other worldly concept has been dreamt up with the aim of inspiring ways to reconnect people with their environment and community.
Image - Wake The Tiger, credit Andre Pattenden
SEE MONSTER
Another world-first arts experience is emerging on the North Somerset coast this summer. A retired oil rig from the North Sea has landed at the Tropicana in Weston-super-Mare, ready to be transformed into SEE MONSTER. This beast will celebrate the great British weather, while championing the role of re-use and creativity with inherited structures. Read more about what you can experience on the Monster and other things to do in the area in our guide to visiting.
Image - SEE MONSTER, credit NEW SUBSTANCE
Think Global: Act Bristol at M Shed (20 July – 30 October)
How did we reach a climate and ecological emergency? What was Bristol’s role in creating it? And how do we help get out of it? These are questions Think Global: Act Bristol explores, using historical objects from the city’s past as well as art commissions representing invisible effects and collaborative solutions. Leave feeling confident in your power to make change.
Grayson’s Art Club at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (Ends 4 September)
There’s not long left to catch this exhibition featuring artworks from the Grayson’s Art Club TV series. All the pieces were created by the public, established artists and celebrities as personal responses to the pandemic, forming a lasting artistic record of the unprecedented times the nation has experienced together.
Image - Grayson's Art Club
Earth: Digging Deep in British Art 1781 - 2022 at RWA (9 July – 11 September)
Earth is the final instalment of the elements series at the recently revamped RWA. See how modern, historical and contemporary artists’ approach to the landscape have changed over time, from pastoral idylls of the 18th century to present-day confrontations of the climate emergency. The exhibition bears witness to the earth’s mistreatment and its magnificence, its fullness and fragility, inviting you to consider our planet in all its abundance, precarity and preciousness.
Image - Earth: Digging Deep in British Art 1781 - 2022, installation view, RWA, 2022. Photo: Martin Edwards
Forest: Wake this Ground at Arnolfini (9 July – 2 October)
Arnolfini has curated pieces from global artists, writers, filmmakers and composers for Forest: Wake this Ground, which explores the many interconnected layers existing above and below the forest floor. Works that recycle, reuse and repurpose resources will uncover the forests’ ancient rhythms, as well as exploring stories, myths and folktales.
Image - Wild Relatives, credit Jumana Manna and Marte Vold
Hum: Amitai Romm's Solo Exhibition at Spike Island (27 July – 18 September)
Artist and researcher Amitai Romm’s first UK solo exhibition explores how nature is mediated by technology, speculating on the hybrid relationships that can be formed between plant life, sensors, data collection processes and our own human bodies. He uses data from one of the world’s oldest continuous datasets of carbon sequestration – an environmental sensing system in a mature beech forest in Denmark – to produce new works in sculpture and sound.
Image - Amitai Romm, Graft (2022), digital scan. Courtesy the artist.
Bristol Light Festival presents: Luminarium (4 – 14 August)
Experience stepping inside a stained-glass window this August, when Bristol Light Festival’s summer installation will be popping up on College Green for 11 days. Made up of inflatable domes filled with natural light and colour, the Luminarium is a sunlight-powered sensory experience featuring kaleidoscopic colours, domes, tunnels and pods.
Image - Luminarium, credit Alan Parkinson
Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience at Propyard (Ends 4 September)
How about stepping into a Van Gogh painting instead? Summer is your last chance to enter the post-impressionist’s world via The Immersive Experience at Propyard. Learn all about his life and influences; admire a floor-to-ceiling light and sound spectacular, featuring projections of his most compelling works; take a VR journey into ‘a day in the life of the artist’; and get creative in the drawing studio.
Image - Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
The World Reimagined Trail (13 August – 31 October)
Bristol is one of seven cities where the ground-breaking World Reimagined Trail is taking over this summer. Designed to transform how we all understand the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impact, there’ll be 10 globe sculptures from artists responding to nine themes, from Mother Africa to Reimagine the Future.
Image - The World Reimagined globe by 3dom
Overstory at Bristol Shopping Quarter (19 – 30 August)
The Natural History Consortium is bringing a tree-inspired installation to Broadmead, along with a family-friendly programme of environmental art and woodland-themed activities. The beautiful canopy will draw your eyes upwards, emphasising not only the calm, beauty and shade of the tree canopy, but also the importance of maintaining tree coverage across the city.
Even more summertime arts and culture
From Shakespeare to cinema from the Caribbean community, there’s plenty more culture to soak up in Bristol this summer:
- Cables & Cameras: Jamaican Independence 60th Anniversary at Watershed
- Wild Wonder: Children's Book Festival at Westonbirt
- Looking to the Light at Glenside Hospital Museum
- Sudeley Sculpture Safari at Sudeley Castle & Gardens
- Bristol Shakespeare Festival
- StoryTrails at Bristol Central Library
Keep searching our What's On listings for arts and culture events.
Read more about #SummerInBristol:
Related
The world’s first Amazement Park®, Wake The Tiger introduces the world of Meridia. An alternative space where passion, creativity and dreams come to life. Enter the Dream Factory.
Explore an unexpected public art installation in Weston-super-Mare, created from a former North Sea offshore platform.
M Shed is an exciting and innovative flagship museum for Bristol with gallery space and a packed events schedule.
Museum and art gallery exhibiting some outstanding collections of art, archaeology, Egyptology and natural history in a magnificent building
Bristol's first art gallery, housing over 1200 works of art from 19th century to the present day, a coffee shop and a small gift shop.
Arnolfini is a centre for contemporary arts based on Bristol’s Harbourside. The organisation is dedicated to producing and presenting visual arts, performance, film, music and events.
A unique centre devoted to the production and exhibition of the contemporary visual arts, as well as a great café space
Ever wondered what it would be like to be inside a stained-glass window? Bristol Light Festival is bringing the sensational sensory experience Luminarium to Bristol for 10 days this summer as a free-to-visit immersive experience on College Green.
The exhibit invites visitors to step into more than 300 of Van Gogh’s sketches, drawings, and paintings by using floor-to-ceiling digital projections, made possible by state-of-the-art video mapping technology.
The World Reimagined is a ground-breaking UK art-education project which will see trails of over 100 large globe structures in seven cities across the UK.
Head down to Broadmead 19 -30 August to see Overstory, a tree-inspired installation from contemporary artists Ivan Morison and Heather Peak.
Enjoy a lively programme of independent film, digital media and events at this fantastic media centre in the heart of the Harbourside
Westonbirt, The National Arboretum, managed by the Forestry Commission, is one of the finest collections of temperate trees and shrubs in the world.
Walk in the footsteps of Kings and Queens at Sudeley Castle. Delve into a 1000 year history, explore award-winning gardens, indulge in luscious lunches, enjoy the adventure playground, and more.
Glenside Hospital Museum is located within the grounds of the old hospital, it aims to inform, educate and de-stigmatise mental illness and learning difficulties.
This year, Bristol Shakespeare Festival is back to its signature blend of indoor and outdoor performances, children and adult drama workshops, and quirky takes on favourite plays.
Using a mix of stunning augmented reality experiences that remix the BFI and BBC archive, you will experience history where it actually happened, revitalising the streets upon which they stand with new voices and untold stories of the past.
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