BRISTOL.- Arnolfini, Bristol's international centre for contemporary arts, is excited to announce an ambitious programme of exhibitions for 2026, featuring internationally renowned contemporary artists: Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh, British artist Jonathan Baldock, documentary photographer Polly Braden, a host of new filmmaking talent supported by the Film and Video Umbrella, and Freelands Award winner Joy Gregory.

With collaboration at its core, our 2026 programme will be delivered in partnership with international museums, galleries, festivals and commissioning partners, including Bonnefanten, Maastricht, NL; Film and Video Umbrella, UK; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; and Bristol Photo Festival, Bristol, UK.

Addressing contemporary themes spanning migration, conflict, gender rights, body politics, the climate crisis, queer trauma, spirituality, coastal poverty, youth deprivation, diasporic stories and colonial histories, Arnolfini’s 2026 programme asks its audiences to engage with the complex questions facing humanity, asking what it is to be in the world today.

Mounira Al Solh: A land as big as her skin
28 February - 24 May 2026

The 2026 programme opens with a major new solo exhibition from Mounira Al Solh: A land as big as her skin currently showing at Bonnefanten, Netherlands. This multidisciplinary exhibition includes her critically acclaimed Venice Biennale pavilion installation A Dance with her Myth from 2024, taking visitors on a journey through Middle Eastern mythology to contemporary times. Comprising of a life-size boat skeleton, film, paintings, drawings and masks that together retell the story of Phoenician Princess Europa and king of the Greek god’s Zeus, this subversive installation will be shown alongside new works Elissa’s Room and Europa’s Bedroom, exploring the fortunes of Queen Elissa and Europa through a modern lens and building upon Al Solh’s growing interest in folklore and mythology.

Lebanese artist Al Solh (b. Beirut 1978), now lives and works between the Netherlands and Lebanon, poignantly and playfully navigating a multitude of complex themes such as identity, migration, trauma, inequality and gender, through her deep love of craftsmanship and materials. A collector of stories, Al Solh’s work moves between small, personal memories and collective, political moments, imbuing each with her recognisable joy and humour – a light-heartedness she sees as a right and form of resistance. Combining traditions from the Middle East and the Netherlands A land as big as her skin embodies Al Solh’s deeply personal and collaborative approach and practice: ‘rhythmical, whirling and melodious. It makes you want to dance and to cry, just like the most beautiful love songs.’

FVU New Takes
28 February - 4 October 2026

Running throughout spring and summer Arnolfini will be celebrating ambitious new talent in moving image, partnering with Film and Video Umbrella to present FVU New takes.

Presented in our Dark Studio, each month, New Takes will showcase a newly commissioned work by one of six early-career artists working in moving image. The featured artists – Mahdy Abo Bahat, Anna Engelhardt, Hantao Li, Morisha Moodley, Jameisha Prescod and Lucy Rose Shaftain-Fenner – offer bold and inventive approaches to storytelling and form, addressing a plethora of contemporary themes including ‘the global climate crisis, crip filmmaking, body politics, state violence, archival memory, and contemporary trans+ and British culture’. Employing diverse practical techniques, from analogue film to 3D animation, these works highlight the breadth and ambition of the UK’s emerging moving-image landscape.

Jonathan Baldock
27 June - 27 September 2026

For summer, British artist Jonathan Baldock (b.1980) takes over our first-floor galleries with a new commission, channelling his long-held interest in myth and folklore. The new installation takes inspiration from Michel Pastoureau’s historical study The Bear: History of a Fallen King, exploring the symbolic life of the bear from ancient forest deity to children’s bedtime companion. Deeply rooted in traditional craft techniques, Baldock’s practice often works with natural materials such as clay and textiles, imbuing the work with a tactile familiarity.

Saturated with humour and wit, Baldock works across multiple platforms including sculpture, installation and performance, with work often taking on a biographical form, addressing the trauma, stress, sensuality, mortality, and spirituality around our relationship to the body and the space it inhabits. Working in a performative manner, his exhibition at Arnolfini builds upon recent projects at Jupiter Artland and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, encompassing multiple senses, from sight, touch, sound and scent.
Jonathan Baldock is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Nicelle Beauchene, New York.

Against the Tide, Polly Braden
27 June - 27 September 2026

Documentary photographer Polly Braden (b.1974) explores the effects of coastal poverty in a collaboration with young people from some of the most deprived and often forgotten places across England and Wales. Telling the stories of a group of diverse 16-25-year-olds, Braden places their stories at the heart of her project, narrated by journalist Lisa Bachelor as part of The Guardian’s wider Seascape series. Navigating the faded coastal towns of Whitehaven, Tendring, Blackpool, and Weston Super Mare, Against the Tide shares stories of fragile seasonal employment, aging populations, and what often comes across as love-hate relationships with the towns they call home. Including film and photography Braden works closely alongside her Gen Z collaborators, gently teasing out their personal tales against a backdrop of hard-hitting research, that shows that ‘life chances are drastically reduced if you grow up on the coast.’

A prior winner of the Jerwood Photography Prize, 2003 and The Guardian Young Photographer of the Year, 2002, Braden is known for her long-term, research driven collaborations, Braden’s portraits create ongoing conversations between ‘the people she photographs and the environments in which they find themselves’.

Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey
17 October 2026 - 7 February 2027

Our Autumn exhibition for 2026 brings Joy Gregory’s first major survey show to Arnolfini. Spanning four decades, this landmark exhibition brings together over 250 works encompassing photography, film, installation and textiles, all of which showcase and celebrate Gregory’s inventive, culturally resonant and materially rich practice. Since the early 1980s Gregory (b.1959, UK), winner of the eighth annual Freelands Award and one of the UK’s most innovative artists working with photography today, has been a pioneering force in contemporary photography, playing a critical role in its development nationally and internationally.

Gregory’s work explores identity, history, race, gender and societal ideals of beauty, while expanding photography’s aesthetic and material possibilities, encompassing Victorian photographic techniques such as cyanotypes and kallitypes, as well as digital media and performance, inviting important reflections on power structures, representation and cultural memory. Catching Flies with Honey includes pivotal self-portrait series’ such as Autoportrait (1990), alongside explorations of beauty and gender in The Handbag Project (1998–present) and Girl Thing (2002–2004); works originating from Gregory’s many journeys across Sri Lanka, the Caribbean and Europe; her playful and piercing meditation on racialised standards of beauty in The Blonde (1997–2010); the expansive multimedia work Memory and Skin (1998) – which Gregory has described as a ‘story-telling space for the past, present and future; the personal and political’ – and her newly commissioned film, shot in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa (part of a 20 year-long collaboration with the indigenous community whose ancestors spoke the now-moribund language of N|uu).