Opening date for new immersive gallery at Bristol’s Harbourside

The Undershed will open on Saturday, October 26.
-Credit: (Image: Bristol Live)


A new immersive art gallery is set to open later this month in Bristol. The Undershed, which is owned by the Watershed, will be located at the waterfront just off the city centre, between the Watershed and No. 1 Harbourside and will open on Saturday, October 26.

The gallery will be home to “curated exhibitions of extraordinary work from local and international artists and makers”. The first exhibition, titled Sing the Body Electric , will run from October 26 until December 22, focusing on the senses and the body.

The gallery, located on the Harbourside, will offer a programme of interactive artworks curated by director Amy Rose, who is the Pervasive Media Studio Resident. Tickets are on sale now for the exhibition which will showcase work from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Korea and the UK.

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Amy Rose said: “I am so proud to be the first curator of Watershed’s ground-breaking immersive exhibition space and to showcase the extraordinary artists who play with immersion, both home-grown and from all over the world. One of my aims for the space is to experiment with what interactivity and participation can mean in this new kind of gallery and I believe the work of these first four artists will do just that. Inviting audiences to step more intimately into a story can change how (and where) stories really happen – and inspire dialogue where there might otherwise be silence.”

The exhibition will be split into two parts, the first running from October 26 until November 24, and the second part from November 29 until December 22. The latter will look at the unseen elements of the senses through a story.

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There will be four artworks on display in the first part of the exhibition; a interactive 'magic mirror' that connects your body to digital bodies of others by movement, invisible sculptures that can only be seen by senses other than vision, a mixed-reality work using VR challenging the dependency on vision and a silent film focusing on intimacy with touch.

Exhibitions at the new gallery will bring together work from cinema and creative technology to create an immersive experience. A message has appeared on the outside of the Undershed describing what Bristolians can experience.

It said: “Get ready to enter Watershed’s brand-new exhibition space - a welcoming and playful home for immersive and interactive work, from artists and makers both home-grown and from all around the world. Here, you might wander between visions stretched across screens, step into a virtual world, get lost in solitary soundscapes or head out into the streets to play and explore.

“Undershed is a gallery that asks for your participation. It is a place to be together and experiment with new forms of storytelling made possible by new technologies.”

Jo Lansdowne, Watershed’s Executive Producer, said: “We are hugely grateful to our brilliant partners at UWE Bristol, Bristol+Bath Creative R+D and MyWorld for their trust and financial support transforming Undershed into a new space for Bristol’s artists and audiences. It means such a lot that Watershed’s long standing creative technology work will now be much more available for everyone to engage with.

“And we are delighted to announce that Sing the Body Electric and other upcoming exhibitions have been enabled through the BFI Audience Projects Fund, and Arts Council England's Nationally Significant Projects awarding funds from the National Lottery. This support will ensure that Undershed’s programme is ambitious in its breadth and depth as we seek to develop cross-artform culture for the future, bringing new audiences of all backgrounds to immersive work.”

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