Arts / watershed
New ‘immersive gallery’ to open in Bristol in 2024
The name of Bristol’s new immersive gallery, Undershed, gives a clue as to its location.
When it opens in the spring of 2024, Undershed exhibitions will include film, projections, mixed reality, VR, audio, music and more.
The gallery featuring a year-round programme of immersive work will be downstairs at Watershed next door to its box office.
is needed now More than ever
The Watershed team say that immersive art and media “means work that uses technology to engage an audience within it, often with some kind of active interaction or participation”.
Watershed CEO Clare Reddington said: “We think that brilliant immersive work is too often limited to shown only at festivals, or exhibited with an emphasis on the technology, rather than the quality, meaning and relevance of the work.
“There is a huge body of brilliant work that rarely finds a public audience in Bristol or beyond.”
……………………………..
Read more: Immersive audio smartphone adventure tells the untold stories of St Paul’s
……………………………..
Amy Rose of award-winning creative studio Anagram has recently been exploring the potential for a space at Watershed that could show both Bristol-made and touring immersive works.
She said: “There is no space or venue in Bristol that pursues any ongoing relationship with audiences to improve their access to immersive work and explore or develop their experience of it.
“As an artist, this means that the chances of the work being presented and promoted well are slim.
“If Watershed had a space, it could transform this. We would jump at the chance to present work in this context.
“Despite making immersive work for ten years and winning multiple international awards, we have never had any real opportunity to put on work in Bristol; even though this is where we live and work.”
Undershed will be located next door to the Watershed box office – photo: Martin Booth
Reddington added: “We will work with diverse creatives and audiences, and use new technologies to inspire, delight and critique the world we live in and the role that technology plays in it.
“We will curate and host internationally leading work from across the world, as well as show emerging work from our own community – hopefully building a network of venues to co-programme, share work and develop sustainable practice with.
“Although the space itself is modest, it is on the ground floor which means it will be highly visible to people passing by as well as those visiting it intentionally, or going to something else at Watershed…
“Undershed feels brave, new, exciting and completely obvious for Watershed. We can’t wait to share it with you.”
Main photo: Jon Aitken
Read next:
- ‘Join us in fore-fronting togetherness as a positive force in a complicated world’
- Women Make Horror comes to the Watershed
- An ode to Watershed’s new gender neutral toilets
Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast:
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
