Join us for a special behind the scenes tour of Spike Island where Asmaa Jama and Veronica Vickery open their studio doors to the public.
As part of the Heritage Open Days, join us for a special behind the scenes tour of Spike Island where two artists will open their studio doors to the public. This is a chance to; explore the building’s unique architectural features and gain a glimpse into its previous life as a Brooke Bond tea-packing factory and meet some of the artists based at Spike Island, learn about their practice and see works in progress.
On this visit, meet artists Asmaa Jama and Veronica Vickery. Asmaa Jama is a Somali multidisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker based in Bristol, UK. Their work is interested in myth, movement, and migration. Veronica Vickery’s materials-led practice fuses and layers sculpture, ceramics, painting, performance and sound, and has recently expanded to include spinning and weaving.
10:45: Visitors meet at reception
11:00: Short tour of floor 1
11:15: Studio visit 1, with Asmaa Jama
11:45: Short tour of ground floor
12:00: Studio visit 2, with Veronica Vickery
12:30: End
Asmaa Jama is a Somali multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker based in Bristol, UK. Their work is interested in myth, movement and migration. Asmaa’s first film work Before We Disappear (2021), was an interactive moving image piece commissioned by BBC Arts, followed by The Season of Burning Things (2021), in collaboration with Gouled Ahmed, commissioned by the Bristol Old Vic (2021).
Their work has also been presented at the 18th and 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with Huda Tayob’s Index of Edges (2023) and the Goethe Institute and Theatre Neumarkt’s 100 Ways to Say We (2021), and was the official selection at Blackstar Film Festival, Aesthetica Film Festival, Sharjah Film Platform 5 (2022) and the New Cinema Awards at Berwick Film Festival (2024).
Jama’s writing has won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize (2024) and was commended for Brunel African Poetry Prize (2022); and shortlisted for the New Poets Prize (2022) Queen Mary Wasafiri Writing Prize (2021); James Berry Poetry Prize (2021) and was longlisted for National Poetry Competition (2021). This year, Jama is one of the selected artist for the inaugural Somalia Pavillion at the Venice Bienniale.
Veronica Vickery fuses sculpture, ceramics, painting, performance and sound, and has recently expanded to include spinning and weaving. Materials-led and site-responsive, she works with foraged, discarded, wasted and gifted materials.
Vickery draws on personal narratives of loss and fragility as they resonate through post-natural environments. Central to her practice is an understanding of breakdown and care — of matter, objects and more-than-human ecologies — as a necessary precursor to ongoing processes of repair, re-formation and life-making.
Recent exhibitions include Fairy Toot at D-Unit, Bristol (2026); an installation of her work was included in the exhibition Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, curated by Lubaina Himid, Royal West of England Academy (2023), and a group show at Eastside projects (2024). She curated the group show ECO|CON (The Launderette and a second iteration at Spike Island, 2023); and co-produced Isn’t Bite Also Touch? an event on contagion and desire with artist-writer Jack Young (Spike Island, 2022).
Opening Hours
Donate
