Spike Island is excited to introduce the Spring 2026 programme for Spike Island Associates, Containment & Transmissions.

Containment & Transmissions reflects on the themes and dynamics that underpin the current exhibitions by Olukemi Lijadu and Phillip Lai. In her new film commission, Feedback, Lijadu examines how rhythms and cultural codes circulate, loop and resonate across bodies and places. In RAIN / RUIN, Lai’s new sculptures combine made and found objects with their own castings, questioning the material world around us, and the structures that underpin it.

Music and sculpture sit at the core of this programme of events, including lectures, listening sessions, workshops, away days, and one-to-one sessions. Participants are invited to explore the tensions between what is held and what is passed on, through notions of repetition and transformation, circulation and containment. How patterns are repeated, how forms are built, and how transmissions happen. We’ll be thinking through human relationships, as well as our interactions, real and imagined, with the material world.

Highlights include:

One-to-one sessions with:
Paul Purgas, multidisciplinary artist and musician working with sound, performance, and installation.
Jessica Vaughan, Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain.

Lectures by:
Alexander G. Weheliye, writer, researcher, and Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, focusing on intersections between Black Studies, critical theory, and popular culture.
Sarah Staton, artist, educator, and Senior tutor in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art.

Workshops on:
Energy and ease in creative practice with Studio Susegad, a Bristol-based creative studio focussing on physical and emotional support structures.
Writing through objects with Francesca Ramsay, Bristol-based writer, editor and curator exploring techniques around de-habituating objects.
Collective listening with Ashley Holmes, artist and broadcaster exploring our relationships to music and sound through Dub epistemologies.

See the full programme of events and sign up to Spike Island Associates here.