BRISTOL.- This spring, Arnolfini and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery are working in partnership to present a compelling exhibition of international art across two venues in central Bristol.

Art from Elsewhere gathers 38 significant artists from 22 countries, whose work addresses life, politics, identity and cultural change within an increasingly ‘globalised’ society. A diversity of themes and perspectives is reflected in the different media used by the artists, including photography, film, painting, drawing, sound, video, sculpture and installation.

Curated by internationally-renowned curator David Elliott, Art from Elsewhere presents work by some of the most important artists working today, including seminal figures from the history of minimal and conceptual art as well as young artists whose work has entered British museums for the first time. The exhibition is a result of the pioneering support of the Art Fund for public collections of contemporary art.

On his inspiration for the exhibition, David Elliot writes: “Sometimes it is easier to see things from far away than those that are close and familiar. At the age of 10, I stumbled into the Leicester City Art Museum after visits to the dentist, and what stuck in my mind were not interminable rows of paintings of fox-hunting that typified a significant part of the collection but strange, brightly-coloured, even violent, paintings from early 20th century Germany that had ended up there through the desperation and generosity of emigres. It was only later that I discovered that these artists and their work had been branded (and destroyed) as ‘degenerate’ by Hitler. I decided that if art could be so powerful I wanted to learn more about it. I believe that in today’s transformed world, art, if it is any good, still has the same power. It expresses autonomy, independence, freedom, intelligence and beauty. Human – even moral - qualities that, sadly, are still undervalued in the precarious times in which we still live.”

Art from Elsewhere has emerged out of the initiative of Art Fund International, a scheme launched by the Art Fund in 2007, that offered regional museums purchasing funds of up to one million pounds each for the acquisition of international contemporary art. Developed as a Hayward Touring exhibition, with support from the Art Fund, Art from Elsewhere is designed to highlight the high quality of the works purchased through the scheme, and to recognise the vital importance of continuing to enrich and disseminate public collections of contemporary art throughout the UK.

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery was one of five collections to benefit from Art Fund International, and support by Arnolfini trustees and staff, was instrumental in the development of the collection strategy and acquisition process for Bristol.

Kate Brindley, CEO of Arnolfini said: “Throughout its history, Arnolfini has been committed to bringing the best of international art to the city, believing that artists provide powerful perspectives on current issues. Working with Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and the Art Fund to develop this unique collection has provided an opportunity to work collaboratively, to pool our knowledge, with the resulting legacy being an important resource for the city and its communities.”

As a port city, Bristol has historically been a centre of international trade. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery reflects this through its collections of artefacts from around the world including Africa, Egypt, Iran, India, Japan, China and the Americas. David Elliott and Hayward Touring have worked with Arnolfini and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery on this final and most ambitious presentation of Art from Elsewhere, bringing exceptional contemporary art and international ideas to audiences in Bristol.

Julia Carver, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery said: “Art from Elsewhere is the culmination of a vital project that truly jump-started the museum’s international contemporary art collection. Our collaboration with Arnolfini enabled us to acquire 41 groundbreaking works by ten female and nine male artists but what’s exciting about this show is that we are also bringing work to Bristol that has been acquired by the other four cities that won the award: Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Eastbourne and Glasgow.”

Across both exhibition sites, common themes emerge. Barbara Kruger, Ana Mendieta, Jenny Holzer and Yael Bartana present powerful responses to conflict and the aftermath of violence. Shilpa Gupta, Emily Jacir and Mohamed Bourouissa address both the concept of borders and the lived experience of having to cross them. The politics of surveillance and representation are key elements in the works of Peter Hujar, Józef Robakowski and Shirin Aliabadi while issues of censorship and resistance to state control emerge in the work of Paulo Bruscky and Eugenio Dittborn. The relationship between capital and culture is explored by Meschac Gaba, Jitish Kallat and Lothar Baumgarten. Finally, experimentation with form and tradition takes centre-stage in the work of Yeesookyung, Robert Breer, Shahzia Sikander and Imran Qureshi.

Lothar Baumgarten’s Unsettled Objects 1968-69, Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford (1969), which examines the colonial frame of the museum display, will be shown for the first time as part of Art from Elsewhere, while Bani Abidi’s video work Shan Pipe Learns the Star-Spangled Banner (2004) will be exhibited for the first time in the UK.

Artists exhibiting at Arnolfini include: Shirin Aliabadi, Carl Andre, Stephen Antonakos, Yto Barrada, Lothar Baumgarten, Paulo Bruscky, Meschac Gaba, Jenny Holzer, Emily Jacir, Jitish Kallat, Amar Kanwar, Imran Qureshi, Rashid Rana, Józef Robakowski, Robert Smithson, Beat Streuli, Akram Zaatari and Horacio Zabala.

Artists exhibiting at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery include: Bani Abidi, Ai Weiwei, Yael Bartana, Mohamed Bourouissa, Robert Breer, Nathan Carter, Thomas Demand, Eugenio Dittborn, Cao Fei, Shilpa Gupta, Peter Hujar, Ola Kolehmainen, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, Shahzia Sikander, Nancy Spero, Kara Walker, and Yeesookyung.