WAWAW | Writing Art Writing Art Writing: When Language Becomes Material

WAWAW is a day-long event exploring relationships between art and writing, presented by WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) – a research initiative supported by UWE Bristol that brings together artists, writers, practitioners and researchers whose work resides at the crossovers between writing and art.

WAWAW includes an afternoon symposium exploring the intersections between art and writing, with keynote presentations from artist-writers Katrina Palmer and Roy Claire Potter. The symposium is followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances from Anna Barham, Lydia Davies and Sam Hasler.

The event emerges from shared interests in the use of language as an affective and creative material for inhabiting, performing and developing ideas. WAWAW intends to create a space to consider what artist Mira Dayal has described as, “placeless writing, writing that can’t settle anywhere, writing that hovers over or below a visual art practice” (2025).

The event will explore and create space for different approaches to working with language as material. It will consider the myriad forms, influences, strategies and concerns percolating this dynamic field of practice. Join WITTA and Spike Island for a day of conversation, exchange and a sharing of references that aims to energise attendees, stimulate discussion and perhaps evoke new ways of working.

A WITTA exhibition of artwork by Spike Island artists, Make Write Write Make, is presented alongside the symposium. Make Write Write Make includes work by Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, Huma Mulji, Amak Mahmoodian, Mary Hurrell and Young In Hong.

The event and exhibition is timed to coincide with the major artist’s book fair, BABE (Bristol Artist Book Event), and with Spike Island’s exhibition, , which includes site-specific sculptural interventions that continue the artist’s interrogation of how material culture, language, collective fantasy and emotion can become manifest in form.

Following this event, WITTA and Spike Island will be running an extended learning programme for practitioners working at the intersections of art and writing. This will involve a workshop-style group crit, followed by one-on-one mentoring for selected participants. Sign up to the Spike Island or WITTA mailing list to find out more.

WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) brings together artists, writers, practitioners and researchers whose work resides at the crossovers between writing and art. The name WITTA reflects an interest in relationships between writing and art that are interrogative, relational, enquiring, speculative, performative, uncertain and sometimes just plain fun. WITTA actively and experimentally considers how work developed at the intersection of words and art allows for creative, recreative, uncreative, wayward and imaginative thinking.

WITTA was founded by Lizzie Lloyd is co-run with Kit Poulson, Senior Lecturers in Fine Art at UWE Bristol with support from Research Associate, Sara O’Brien, writer and PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London. WITTA is supported by UWE Bristol and is part of VAMP (Visual and Material Practices Research Group). These events are generously supported by UKRI Arts and Humanities council through an Arts and Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Account (AHRC IAA) award.

Visit the WITTA website

WAWAW is produced by WITTA (Writing In / To / Through Art) with support from Spike Island. WAWAW is funded by UWE Bristol and AHRC.

1. Michael Dodds (2026). Photography by Ian Stonehouse
2. Roy Claire Potter, performance at Counterflows (2022)
3. Courtesy WITTA and Owen Lloyd

Info: An afternoon symposium exploring the intersections between art and writing, with keynote presentations.

Info: The symposium is followed by an evening salon of dinner accompanied by performances.

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