BRISTOL, UK.- Works by fifty artists and artists’ groups, selected from contemporary artists living and working in the UK, will appear in Bristol this summer for the Hayward Gallery’s sixth British Art Show. The British Art Show is a unique chance to view recent developments in British art, and to experience a visual arts festival on a city-wide scale. A range of Bristol’s museums, galleries and artist-run spaces – Arnolfini, Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery, R O O M, Royal West of England Academy, Spike Island and STATION (The Former Fireboat Station) – will be taking part.

British Art Show 6 will complete its tour in Bristol this summer, after opening at BALTIC in Gateshead in September 2005 and then travelling to Manchester and Nottingham. It has attracted huge audience numbers with more than 100,000 people visiting the exhibition during its run at BALTIC. The British Art Show 6 will arrive in Bristol with new artworks and special commissions specific to the city. Also accompanying the exhibition is a live art programme developed from work included in British Art Show 6. A selection of artists from the exhibition are also developing new commissions in Bristol, responding to its built environment, artifacts and history.

The artwork in British Art Show 6 reflects the diversity and internationalism of current British practice, with 50% of the artists born outside of the UK and over half of the selected artists are women. In developing the shortlist for the British Art Show 6, curators Andrea Schlieker and Alex Farquharson travelled extensively throughout the UK and considered the work of over 500 artists. They said: ‘It is a particularly exciting moment for us to assemble this exhibition, as the art scene in Britain is now broader in outlook, more vibrant and internationally oriented than at any other time in the British Art Show’s 26-year history.