Arnolfini is an international

arts centre An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues fo ...

and gallery in

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, England. It has a programme of

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...

exhibitions, artist's performance, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a specialist art bookshop and a café bar. Educational activities are undertaken and experimental digital media work supported by online resources. Festivals are hosted by the gallery. The gallery was founded in 1961 by Jeremy Rees, and was located in Clifton. In the 1970s it moved to Queen Square, before moving to its present location, Bush House on Bristol's waterfront, in 1975. The name of the gallery is taken from Jan van Eyck's 15th-century painting ''

The Arnolfini Portrait ''The Arnolfini Portrait'' (or ''The Arnolfini Wedding'', ''The Arnolfini Marriage'', the ''Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife'', or other titles) is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck. It f ...

''. Arnolfini was refurbished and redeveloped in 1989 and 2005. Artists whose work has been exhibited include

Bridget Riley Bridget Louise Riley (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France. Early life and education Riley was born on 24 April 1931 in Norwood, Londo ...

Rachel Whiteread Dame Rachel Whiteread (born 20 April 1963) is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993. Whiteread was one of the Young British Ar ...

, Richard Long and Jack Yeats. Performers have included Goat Island Performance Group, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. The gallery reached a new audience in April 2010, when it was chosen to host one of the three 2010 general election debates.

History

Jeremy Rees started Arnolfini with the assistance of his wife Annabel, and the painter John Orsborn in 1961. The location was above a bookshop in the Triangle in Clifton, Bristol. In 1968, Rees was able to give up his teaching job and with the aid of private funding and Arts Council funding relocated the gallery to Queen Square, then to W Shed, later the home of the Watershed Media Centre. In 1975, Arnolfini moved to its present home in Bush House, occupying two floors of a 19th-century Grade II*

listed Listed may refer to: * Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm * Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic * Endangered species in biology * Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...

tea warehouse situated on the side of the

Floating Harbour Bristol Harbour is the harbour in the city of Bristol, England. The harbour covers an area of . It is the former natural tidal river Avon through the city but was made into its current form in 1809 when the tide was prevented from going out perm ...

Bristol city centre Bristol City Centre is the commercial, cultural and business centre of Bristol, England. It is the area north of the New Cut of the River Avon, bounded by Clifton Wood and Clifton to the north-west, Kingsdown and Cotham to the north, and ...

. The remainder of the building was office space leased out by developers JT Group. The architect of Bush House was Richard Shackleton Pope, who constructed first the south part of the warehouse (1831) then extended it to the north in 1835–1836. Its original use was as a warehouse for local iron foundry D., E. & A. Acraman. The building has a

Pennant Sandstone The Pennant Measures is the traditional name for a sequence of sedimentary rocks of the South Wales Coalfield. They were also referred to as the Upper Coal Measures and assigned to the Westphalian 'C' and Westphalian 'D' stages of the Carbonife ...

exterior with arched ground level entrances and arched windows above. This style of architecture is the first example of the

Bristol Byzantine Bristol Byzantine is a variety of Byzantine Revival architecture that was popular in the city of Bristol from about 1850 to 1880. Many buildings in the style have been destroyed or demolished, but notable surviving examples include the Colston ...

style which became popular in the 1850s. Later conversion to a tea warehouse added interstitial floors. Originally dedicated to exhibiting the work of artists from the West of England, under the directorship of Barry Barker (1986–1991) the gallery moved towards a more general spread of

. Barker supervised a refurbishment of the gallery spaces and café bar by David Chipperfield. Before development work began, Arnolfini was attracting over 285,000 visitors per year. Subsequent Directors have been

Tessa Jackson Jane Thérèse "Tessa" Jackson OBE (born 5 November 1955) is a British contemporary art curator, writer and administrator.Tom Trevor Thomas Trevor (born 1962) is a British curator and writer on contemporary art. Trevor is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Curation at the University of Exeter. He was previously Artistic Director of The Atlantic Project, in Plymouth, ...

(2005-2013). As part of a two-year development project that finished in September 2005, the old warehouse has been redeveloped, adding another attic storey. Arnolfini now occupies the lower three floors and basement, and the upper floors are leased to help pay for the running costs. One tenant is the School of Creative Arts, part of the

University of the West of England The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a public research university, located in and around Bristol, England. The institution was know as the Bristol Polytechnic in 1970; it received university status in 1992 and ...

. Funding for this development was received from the National Lottery and the Barker-Mill Trust, set up by long term Arnolfini patron Peter Barker-Mill. The original committee to support Arnolfini included Peter Barker-Mill, Ann Hewer, and Lawrence Ogilvie. In July 2015, Bush House was sold to the

, with a lease-back of the artistic space. The profits from the sale replenished Arnolfini's endowment fund.

Name

The Arnolfini is named after Jan van Eyck's masterpiece ''

'' (1434) depicting the merchant and arts patron

Giovanni Arnolfini Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini (c. 1400 – after 1452) was a merchant from Lucca, a city in Tuscany, Italy. He spent most of his life in Flanders, then part of the Duchy of Burgundy, probably always based in Bruges, a wealthy trading city and one ...

. ''The Arnolfini Portrait'' is one of the earliest paintings to assert the presence of the artist within its depiction (an inscription in the middle of the work and a reflection in a mirror on the back wall) and one of Arnolfini's consistent concerns: to explore the role of artist as a witness and recorder of what is around them – contemporary society. The painting is in the National Gallery, London and it was one of the founder's favourite paintings.

Today

Arnolfini has three floors of galleries, a specialist arts bookshop, a cinema which can also be used as a performance space for theatre, live art, dance and music, a reading room that provides reference material for all past exhibitions, books and catalogues, and a café bar. Entrance to the galleries is free of charge. Notable exhibitions have included works by

, Richard Long,

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

, Angus Fairhurst and

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

. Events include poetry and film festivals, live art and dance performances, lectures and jazz and experimental music concerts, including Bodies in Flight, Goat Island Performance Group, Akram Khan, the

London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is an English contemporary chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble has headquarters at Kings Place and is Resident Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. Since its inaugural concert in 1968—givi ...

, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Random Dance, and Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. There is an access and education programme, hosting visits from students, workshops with artists, presenting interpretative information and offering some work experience placements within the gallery. ''project.ARNOLFINI'' is an online experimental web site with dumps of digital media related to Arnolfini exhibitions and events, past and present, which may be reorganised by any online user, utilising resources on the web site to create new works and projects under a

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...

license. Arnolfini also hosts events from outside organisations, including the ''Encounters Short Film Festival'' (along with the Watershed Media Centre), Mayfest, the first Festival of British Independent Cinema, the biennial Time Festival of Live Art and Intrigue and the Bristol Artists Book Events. In April 2010,

British Sky Broadcasting Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

chose Arnolfini to host the second of the three 2010 general election debates. Arnolfini receives funding from Arts Council England, and Bristol City Council. According to returns lodged with the Charity Commission for the year ending in March 2016, Arnolfini had 500,000 visitors in 2013/2014. Income was £2.1 million and expenditure was £2.7 million and the gallery employed 44 people. In 2017 the Arnolfini, which had asked for increased funding in recent years, will be losing its Arts Council England £750,000 annual grant after an assessment that the Arnolfini was "not viable" in its current model. In 2017 a new director, Claire Doherty, was appointed. She aimed to devise a viable financial model. A show by Grayson Perry drew in more than 300 visitors a day.

References

External links

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Bush House

Pevsner Architectural Guides The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...

{{authority control Commercial buildings completed in 1836 1836 establishments in England Grade II* listed buildings in Bristol Art museums and galleries in Bristol Museums in Bristol Bristol Harbourside Music venues in Bristol Art museums established in 1961 1961 establishments in England Grade II* listed museum buildings

History

Archives

Name

Today

See also

References

External links