Free-for-All
Venue • The Old Post Office • BA1 1BA • click for map
Opening night • Fri 23 May • 6pm until late
Open 11am to 6pm daily • 24 May to 7 June 2025
‘Free-for-All’ - Re imagining Our Common Wealth
Does ‘free-for-all’ mean a chaotic, deregulated, unravelling of order and structure ? Or, does it mean, inclusion, access, social responsibility and voluntary co-operation?
This mixed media exhibition brings together artists and makers and digital commoners who believe a better world is possible.
Connecting histories of resistance to land enclosure and the privatisation of the welfare state, with open-source creators who challenge patenting and copyright law through the digital commons-this exhibition celebrates our deep capacity to share resources with generosity and foresight.
Work on show includes: ceramics, paintings, textiles, sculpture, performance, installation, digital art and film alongside digitally fabricated work.
A Virtual Gallery experience will run alongside the exhibition and will include the work of international artists as well as UK based artists . *
Exhibiting Artists:
Charlie Bramhill, Rhian Drinkwater, Laura Grainger, Jill Laudet, Sonia Trevisan, Pete Ward, Mae Aguinaldo-Mapa, Stefania Distante, Rachel Jones, Natalia Titova, Carol Breen, Brandon Barnard, Holly English and Claudia Sambo, Mark Gee, Annie Morrad, Ava Berriman, Lizi Morse and Josh Bowker.
Artist: Jill Laudet (2025) Title: Decent homes for All (detail), Fabric banners 6 x150cm x 50cm with vinyl symbols
Pete Ward (2022) Devon & Cornwall earth pigments on salvaged wood with cold wax varnish; 31x17cm
The Free-For-All Virtual Gallery is now LIVE!
Fly-Through Video https://youtu.be/bE5fPcq7THg
360 Tour https://youtu.be/1DRilLu2VFk
Our VR gallery unfolds in two linked temples celebrating open access and mutual aid.
The first pavilion—modeled on the temple in Walter Crane’s The Renaissance of Venus (1877)—displays three public-domain masterpieces: Crane’s own Renaissance of Venus; Henri Matisse’s The Snail (1953), newly public domain; and Giotto di Bondone’s Expulsion of the Money-Changers (c. 1304–06).
Across a virtual courtyard, the Exhibition Temple’s design echoes Giotto’s fresco. Works from our open call explore generosity, solidarity, and shared space:
Mae Aguinaldo-Mapa, Kindnesses: a modular textile “ladder” assembled from everyday acts of care, inviting anyone to lean on communal kindness.
Stefania Distante, Growing Together: photographs of wheelchair-accessible gardening gatherings in Gloucester, where raised beds foster purpose and peer support.
Natalia Titova, Digital Collages: layered imagery inspired by Pushkin and Dickens, asserting literary interpretation as a collective creative right.
Rachel Jones, Girl 9: graffiti-style stencils infused with AuDHD perspective, reclaiming public space for neurodiverse voices.
Deborah Weymont and Theo Weywood contribute digital versions of The Scream and Soft on the Inside.
By pairing newly liberated classics with contemporary pieces, the gallery becomes a digital commons—an inherited, remixable environment governed by cooperation rather than competition.
Credits
Becky Bell (Unreal Engine modeling, rendering, UX)
Theo Weywood (3D modeling, curation)
Curators Theo Weywood (l) and Deborah Weymont (r)
Curators Theo Weywood (l) and Deborah Weymont (r)
Curated by Deborah Weymont and Theo Weywood
Mother and son artists Deborah Weymont and Theo Weywood are exploring the commonalities in their own art practices and how to situate them within the wider discourse they occupy. Working in different ways with similar themes they hope to bring an intergenerational dynamism to the curation process and exhibition.
Deborah is a retired special education teacher and art therapist. She has made art all her life and has exhibited regularly in group shows and open studios in Bristol.
Deborah works with ‘wild clay’ dug from common land and land enclosed by the crown, church and landed aristocracy. She digs surface clay and uses it to make natural pigments, pastels clay bodies and glazes. She then make artefacts which invite us to see the world differently and tell new stories about our ‘green and pleasant land’.
Instagram: @deborahweymont
Website: www.deborahweymont.com
Theo is a creative technologist and designer who has worked on research projects exploring innovative, digitally fabricated affordable housing and has designed sustainable, inclusive playgrounds through the Green Play Project. His artwork draws on a Brutalist, Constructivist, and New Tendencies aesthetic, aiming to engage and activate the viewer. Themes of nostalgia for municipal ambition and optimism for community resilience run through his work.
Through his art practice, Theo explores ideas and methodologies at the intersections of design, architecture, and digital manufacturing. He is deeply committed to the concept of the commons, viewing it as a hopeful and practical framework for addressing contemporary challenges.
Instagram: @theoweywood