Exhibitions and commissions 2025–26

Upcoming programme
Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure
February 8–May 11, 2025
Spike Island presents Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, a new moving image commission and exhibition by Dan Guthrie. Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness, with a particular interest in examining how these manifest in rural areas. His latest commission continues his ongoing exploration of the Blackboy Clock, an object of contested heritage on public display in his hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Guthrie’s exhibition presents two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock—a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it. Central to this new body of work are questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so.

Supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, and produced and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Spike Island, Bristol.

Danielle Dean
February 8–May 11, 2025
Spike Island presents a new moving image commission and exhibition by Danielle Dean. The exhibition centres around Hemel, a new film that serves as both a personal essay and a portrait of Hemel Hempstead, the town where Dean grew up. The film explores the town’s history, blending archival footage and contemporary images with references to the sci-fi horror B-movie Quatermass II (1957).

Shot on 16mm film with a cast of non-professional actors and family members, Hemel blurs the line between fiction and documentary, offering a critical reimagining of Quatermass II’s colonial undertones. The film recasts its visual language to explore the race, class and labour dynamics of a small English town in a post-Brexit context.

Accompanying Hemel is a series of drawings and watercolours that capture the dystopian atmosphere that permeates the film.

Co-commissioned by Mercer Union, Toronto; Spike Island, Bristol; and The Vega Foundation. The film is produced by LONO Studio and made possible with the generous support of Patrick Collins, Jill and Peter Kraus, Patrick and Daniela Schmitz-Morkramer, and an anonymous donor.

Donald Locke
May 31–September 7, 2025
Spike Island presents the first major survey exhibition of Guyanese artist Donald Locke (1930–2010). The exhibition at Spike Island explores the development of his work across Guyana, the UK and the United States over five decades, from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. It features early ceramics that evoke human and natural forms, alongside mixed-media sculptures and monochromatic black paintings from the 1970s. Also included are several large-scale paintings from the 1990s that incorporate found images, ceramic elements and crocodile skins. These materials reflect Locke’s evolving approach to the use of different media, his formal ingenuity and the growing influence of African American vernacular art and iconography, following his relocation to the United States. 

Supported by The Ampersand Foundation and organised by Spike Island, Bristol; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; and Camden Art Centre, London, with support from the Donald Locke Estate. The exhibitions at Spike Island and Ikon Gallery are curated by Robert Leckie, Director of Gasworks (and former Director of Spike Island). The exhibition at Camden Art Centre is curated by Martin Clark and Gina Buenfeld-Murley, in collaboration with Robert Leckie. 

Nour Jaouda
September 27, 2025–January 11, 2026
Spike Island is proud to present the first institutional solo exhibition by Libyan artist Nour Jaouda. Jaouda’s fluid, 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. New commissions for Spike Island’s large-scale galleries continue Jaouda’s exploration of cultural identity as an ongoing process of becoming.