News / Bristol Photo Festival
Bristol Photo Festival releases 2021 programme
Bristol Photo Festival, the city’s new photography event, has launched the programme for its inaugural year.
The biennial festival sees all of the city’s major arts institutions come together to display work from artists based across the globe.
The first edition of the festival will include a summer showcase of photography exhibitions, followed by a full autumn programme of exhibitions and events.
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Bristol24/7 is supporting the new festival as local media partners, spreading the word about the festival’s community programmes and releasing exclusive information about the 2021 exhibitions.
The theme for the first festival, A Sense of Place, has seen year-round collaborative programmes involving people from across the city.
The festival will launch in spring 2021 with exhibitions including work by Laia Abril, James Barnor, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Jessa Fairbrother, Adama Jalloh, Lua Ribeira, Jem Southam, Sarah Waiswa.
Nou Fè Pati, Nou Se, Nou Anvi (We Belong, We be, We Long) 2020, IN PROGRESS. Photo: Widline Cadet, courtesy Royal Photographic Society
This will be followed by major exhibitions in the autumn by Stephen Gill, Lebohang Kganye and Thilde Jensen, alongside series of outdoor shows, a book fair, film programme, talks series and symposiums.
The festival has already worked with local allotment owners on the Growing Spaces project, which will be exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in Paintworks in summer 2021.
The Bristol Photo Festival team have also partnered with the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute to create We Are Still Here, use research and photography to document how living spaces are self-curated by those in the HIV and AIDS community.
Work from these artists and the festival’s community projects will be shown at the Martin Parr Foundation, the Floating Harbour, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, the RPS, Watershed, Centrespace and The Georgian House Museum. There will also be events held online.
Woman in front of the poster, selling the jacket and other things, Bethnal Green Road, 1990. Photo: Markéta Luskačová
“When we established in mid-2019 and began to put together this programme with our festival funders, venue partners and curators, we could never have imagined that we would be launching it during such period in global history,” says Tracy Grant, the festival’s director.
“Our theme, A Sense of Place, has taken on an even greater resonance and relevance after 12 months of life restricted within a global pandemic.”
The festival will launch in May 2021.
Main photo: MOSH, The Face 1997. Elaine Constantine
Read more: A look into the lives of those in the HIV and AIDS community
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