Laura Ribbons is an artist, educator, curator and environmentalist, her work explores our relationship to plants in the context of the climate crisis. Alongside artist and tree and fungi fanatic Dominic Head, she has been developing a new exhibition. Find out more in this blog.

On Friday 18 November, a new art exhibition is coming to Centrespace Gallery. Entitled Community of Hope, the exhibition explores creative visual responses to the climate crisis and demonstrates the process of artists bearing witness to this extraordinary moment in human history. Through painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film and installation the exhibition navigates themes from giant underwater kelp forests to pulsating plant-life, and Glaswegian trees to the people of Sierra Leone.

Artists have a vital role to play in the climate movement

I’ve been co-curating this exhibition with fellow artist Dominic Head. We are passionate environmentalists and feel that not enough is being done to combat the climate crisis. We believe that any response needs to be strongly interdisciplinary and inclusive and feel crucially that artists have a vital role to play in the climate movement. Art is and has always been a record of our times, and part of the role of the artist is to bear witness to current events, to use their work to provoke conversations around challenging topics, and to use it as a testing ground for ideas and solutions.

Join the conversation

Throughout its duration the exhibition will play host to talks and workshops for the local community. We invite and encourage members of Bristol Green

Capital Partnership to join us at these events and to come along and be part of the conversation. Despite the volatility of the current environmental, socio-political and economic situation, this exhibition is pursuing and revelling in the possibility of hope, joy and the power of collective change. We would like as many members of the local community as possible to get involved.

Additionally, we currently have a sponsorship opportunity for a local business! If you would like to be involved as a sponsor of this exhibition to help us support the incredible artists we’re working with and reach a wide cross section of the Bristol community, please get in touch with me laura.ribbons@hotmail.co.uk

Please join us on Friday 18 November for our Private View from 6:30-8:30pm – we would love to see you there!

The exhibition then runs from Saturday 19 – Wednesday 30 November, open every day from 10am-6pm.

Here is a list of some of the other events taking place over the course of the exhibition:

• Saturday 19 November, 12pm-3pm: Kelp & Critters Workshop with artist Camilla Brendon
• Saturday 19 November, 5pm-6:30pm: Community of Hope: An Artist Panel Discussion
• Sunday 20 November and Sunday 27 November 12pm-3pm: Art X Climate Crisis: A Creative Workshop with artist Laura Ribbons
• Saturday 26 November 5pm-6:30pm, Finding Hope and affecting change in times of crisis: Panel discussion with local experts.

All event information and tickets can be found here linktr.ee/community_of_hope_bristol

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