BRISTOL.- Spike Island shared its programme for 2026–27, a year that marks 50 years since the organisation’s founding as Artspace Bristol: an experiment in creativity and collectivism. Today, that bold vision and artist-led ethos still thrive at Spike Island.

Spike Island's passion lies in working closely with artists to produce ambitious, large-scale commissions at pivotal moments of their careers. It is also a site of learning and knowledge production, and directly support artists through over 70 subsidised studios and a sector-leading artist development programme.

Phillip Lai: RAIN / RUIN
January 31–May 10, 2026

A major solo exhibition of new work by Phillip Lai (b.1969, Kuala Lumpur), bringing together a body of sculptural commissions that continue the artist’s exploration of the material world around us. Lai’s sculptures combine everyday objects with his own intensive re-makings of them to create a parallel imprint of the real world. Within these imagined constructions, Lai is interested in excavating the underlying interaction of things and our psychological interactions with them.

Supported by the Art Fund, Henry Moore Foundation, Modern Art, Kiang Malingue and the Phillip Lai Commissioning Circle.

Olukemi Lijadu: Feedback
January 31–May 10, 2026

Feedback is the first institutional solo exhibition by Nigerian-British artist, filmmaker and DJ Olukemi Lijadu (b.1994, London). Developed through extensive research in Chicago, Lagos and Bristol, it centres on a major film commission. The film traces the legacy of West African music on electronic music in Chicago and the UK, investigating sound loops and drum rhythms as metaphors for (dis)connection, and the circulation of collective memory and cultural codes within the African diaspora.

Nancy Lupo
May 30–September 6, 2026

A new commission by Nancy Lupo (b.1983, Flagstaff, AZ), including site-specific sculptural interventions that probe aspirations, ambiguities and material culture. In her work, Lupo reflects on how collective fantasies and emotions become embedded in form. She further explores these ideas through writing that she publishes as zines, and soon, in her first novel, Meow Meow Real Estate.

The exhibition includes a work co-produced by the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation (London) and Spike Island, bridging the two solo presentations.

Tohé Commaret
May 30–September 6, 2026

The first exhibition in the UK by Franco-Chilean artist Tohé Commaret (b.1992, Vitry-sur-Seine), featuring Rosa, a new moving image commission realised as part of the PONTOPREIS MMK 2026. Commaret’s enigmatic short films drift at the threshold between documentary and fiction, approaching social realities through magical realism. Rosa follows several women from different backgrounds, all living in the suburbs of Paris, whose lives become suddenly entangled through a secret diary.

Commissioned by MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST (Frankfurt) in collaboration with Spike Island. Produced by Parcelles Films (Paris) and supported by Fluxus Art Projects.

Beverly Buchanan: Weathering
September 26, 2026– January 31, 2027

The first survey of Beverly Buchanan’s (b.1940, Fuquay, NC; d.2015, Ann Arbor, MI) work in Europe. It brings together five decades of Buchanan’s practice, from her early 1970s ‘Wall’ paintings to later works examining rural Southern vernacular architecture, often through environmental interventions and her signature ‘shack’ sculptures. Informed by an engagement with issues of class, gender and colonial memory, her works highlight the intrinsic connection between architecture and structural disparities, seen through the prism of her lived experience as a Black queer woman.

Developed in collaboration with Haus am Waldsee (Berlin) and 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine (Metz).

Özgür Kar
February 20–May 23, 2027

The exhibition marks Özgür Kar’s (b.1992, Ankara) institutional solo debut in the UK. His multidisciplinary practice intertwines video, sculpture, animation and sound to create immersive environments that explore themes of mortality, alienation and repetition. At Spike Island, Kar deepens his engagement with opera and theatre as settings of existential enquiry. Scenography and dramaturgy structure a deadpan narrative that unfolds across the galleries of the exhibition.