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About FaB: Fringe Arts Bath (FaB) is a test bed for new ideas, a platform for early career curators and artists, and those who prefer to operate outside the gallery-based art scene.

Here you can read short descriptions of the 17 exhibitions, projects and events we are supporting for the Fringe Arts Bath Festival programme 2026.

To find out more please click the link or image relating to any project, including media accepted and details of how to apply.

Volunteers

Join the team! We're always looking for help, from regular festival production sessions year-round to festival set-up & take-down, behind-the-scenes tech, event stewards, invigilators, photographers, data collectors and other ad-hock help.
To find out more visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/support

The Stitch That Bit Back:

A textile exhibition celebrating rebellious, confrontational fibre works that challenge softness and tradition - highlighting resistance, subversion, emotional labour, and provocative narratives through stitched, woven, sculpted, or experimental forms that “bite back.”
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/stitch for info & to apply.

The Motive of the Puppeteer

Visible or hidden, control shapes systems; unseen forces guide identity and motion. This project examines how artists reveal manipulation, giving form to obscured mechanisms and to forces that shape meaning.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/puppet for info & to apply.

The Absurd

The Absurd is a mixed-media exhibition that explores how artists continue to create work in a world that resists meaning, focusing on persistence, contradiction, despair and humour.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/absurd for info & to apply.

Pride was a Riot!

Exploring the crucial historic reminder of pride’s origins, how the fight for queer rights began and continues to be a riot! Driven by narrative, the space will be turned into an uprising.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/riot for info & to apply.

Permission to Touch

How would our experience of art exhibitions be different if we were allowed to touch the artworks? This exhibition will contain works designed to be engaged with using touch and other senses, providing an intimate viewing experience.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/permission for info & to apply.

New Only:Only New

What is new? I would like to explore the organic nature of process based work and artistic autonomy. Work that consecutively changes through chance, impulse, making or interaction. No AI, no generating.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/new for info & to apply.

Nest

For artists exploring how creative practice can nurture wellbeing, reflect on the body’s fragility and resilience, and aid journeys of healing.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/nest for info & to apply.

My World, My View

We’re inviting you to reconnect globally in this digital age by sharing local, everyday views from your window or street. Let’s turn our own single observations into a shared artistic landscape of human experience.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/view for info & to apply.

Male Art

What does it mean to be male? 'Male Art' aims to take a gendered and intersectional perspective on the widest range of male experiences and identities.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/male for info & to apply.

Inexpressible

‘The most profound things are inexpressible’, Jenny Holzer, Truisms. Artists are invited to respond to this challenge and submit short films for a screening of artist films for FaB26.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/inexpressible for info & to apply.

godshed

We invite multi disciplinary creative practitioners to participate in creating 'gods of our time' to challenge and bring alive the concepts which shape our thinking and culture.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/godshed for info & to apply.

20th FaB Photomarathon! Saturday 25 April

It’s a simple challenge: submit 20 photos, in response to 20 themes, taken in the right order over 10h. Far more than that, the FaB Photomarathon takes you on a psychogeographical ramble through the city of Bath, UK, for the 20th year.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/photomarathon for full info.

Chance Encounters: Art Through Accident and Invitation

An exhibition exploring how artists purposefully invite chance into their practice - through systems, collaborations, and accidents - discovering how relinquishing control generates unexpected meaning and transforms the creative process.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/chance for info & to apply.

Cardboard World

A series of workshops and a growing cardboard space - info coming soon…
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/cardboard for info

!Bring on the Bling!

In these days of darkness, this exhibition proposes a vibrant and dazzling antidote.
It is a call to battle despair, not with weapons, but an explosion of colour and sparkle.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/bling for info & to apply.

An Ecology of Line

Building on Tim Ingold’s provisional taxonomy, this show explores different “species” of line - threads, traces, dots & blobs, invisible or imaginary lines - and their complex intra-actions.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/line for info & to apply.

The 2020s: Sacred Brands and Disposable Gods, Presented with Limited Ad Interruptions

Imagine a future archeologist creating an exhibit on the 2020s. Playfully explore the messy nature of writing history through artistic pieces misimagining the decade as seen by a future society.
Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/brands for info & to apply.

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The New Vision

How can we as artists imagine and communicate altered states of consciousness and perception? This is an invitation to explore the ways in which our environment is subliminally influencing our collective consciousness.

Visit fringeartsbath.co.uk/vision for info and to apply.

Events

Inviting submissions for workshops / dance / performance / films / participatory / intervention and other time-based work for FaB’s live events program.
Max 200 words (written or audio file or short video) + images / video / sound / links via email to submissions@fringeartsbath.co.uk

Groups & Collectives

Inviting artist groups & collectives with work of a high standard that they wish to show.
Send max 200 words (written or audio file or short video) + images / video / sound / links via email to submissions@fringeartsbath.co.uk

CAN YOU SUPPORT FAB?

You can make a donation, or share some skills and a little of your time by volunteering, click here to find out more.

About Fringe Arts Bath

Fringe Arts Bath (FaB) aims to raise the profile of contemporary visual arts in Bath and beyond, providing early-career and emerging Curators and Artists with a platform for development as well as opportunities to test their ideas beyond the gallery-based arts scene.

Our kep projects are Fringe Arts Bath Festival, Bath’s only annual visual arts festival, and the Bath Opebn Art Prize, open to all media, all genres and all artists worldwide.

FaB facilitates collaborative projects between Curators, Artists and commissioning bodies throughout the year, we are interested in hearing about new initiatives you might have.