Art Against War Club

Blood in the Bricks

(colston drone)

There’s a crude but direct line between selling people to extract resources and selling weapons to kill people to extract resources. A line which can feel impossible to break in a city that has a tendency to absolve, even celebrate, those who put business first.

The hard reality is that Colonialism hasn’t been sunk yet, it just has a new face.This figure stands at the crossroads of what we know we can do, and what we are yet to do.

Geno – cider

“Bristol, the self-declared ‘world capital of cider’, brings you ‘Geno Cider’ – a brew so bitter that it’s impossible to stomach.

Great for apartheid, ethic cleansing, and murdering children. Made in Filton. Exported to Israel.”

Who Do You Protect, Who Do You serve

This image shows 4 ordinary people triumphantly holding aloft the Palestinian flag over the Elbit weapons factory that they have brought to a standstill in Filton. (The image is actually of airbus who are equally complicit in Bristols ugly trade)   Below at street level we are confronted by battalion of heavily militarised police acting as free security protecting the elbit gates, their profits and ultimately the warped ideology that allows the genocide continue

Solidari tea

Tired and cold, standing in the rain on a winter morning, but there is a small warmth in a sip of hot tea, in the linked arms of your friends. The hot sip of tea warms my body like hope that grows, the dream of a world without weapons factories, a dream of what could be here instead, community gardens, really social housing and nothing in scarcity. Let’s all dream over cups of tea, outside the weapons factory, and not only dream but make and do! meet us there.

Comic strip

This comic emerged through conversations about how embedded the arms trade is throughout Bristol. Chess is a clear metaphor for military strategy, so we imagined the arms trade and Bristol’s complicit institutions – universities, schools, local government pension schemes – as chess pieces. The board becomes capitalism, structuring everything we move through. We the people become a mass of pawns.

Solidarity is an action, so we want this to be an invitation to act. How will your pawn join the collective resistance?

The Gaza Sunbirds

The Gaza Sunbirds are a para-cycling team from the Strip who have all lost limbs to the occupation. Since ’23 they have been supporting their neighborhoods by bike. They say “We are not aid workers, but a group of athletes that knows how to make things happen in Gaza. We distribute food in areas where traditional aid organisations are no longer able to reach

In 2024 Alaa al-Dali became the firstathlete to represent Palestine in a World Championship.

Sunbird Tandem

The Palestine sunbird knows no borders. It is free, unlike the people living where it flies.

It was declared the national bird of Palestine in 2015 after the Israeli occupiers tried to change its name in their efforts to erase Palestinian identity.

The artist Khaled Jarrar designed postage and passport stamps for the State of Palestine, using the Palestine sunbird as the motif.

Sunbirds feed on nectar but can also eat insects and spiders, especially when feeding their young.

Basket by Amu

this basket stored my groceries and ferried ingredients for the food memories of the Ninky Nonk boat commune that continue to keep me well fed in prison. this basket is shaped by the love of my teacher linda, my friend Caleb, who gleaned the willow with me, by his teacher, who grew it on her allotment, and by Loch Alsh, whose waters softened the rods, I then persuaded to become a container. And accepted those I didn’t yet as driftwood. Power to the beavers and the weavers!

Spirit of Freedom

This piece was inspired by the women leading the chants for freedom, during the 2019 Sudanese Revolution. They used community and their voices against teargas, bullets, sexual violence and arrest. Alaa Salah is pictured here. A young revolutionary from a humble background, taking to the street to demand better from their government.

Since 2019, Sudan is once again in the midst of war with civilians caught in the middle. This painting is to bring light to the many women that risked their lives to protest

Collage

Bristol is a city with an international reputation for arts and radicalism that’s either unaware or in total denial about also being one of the largest arms manufacturing centres in Europe.

the collage wall expresses just how absurd the duality of bristol is centred around the one our our grandest buildings – Ashton gate stadium. It’s a space that in the same month hosts a celebration of the cities creatives communities in the form of Bristol Legends Awards, and the worst, an Arms Fair which is being held there on April 23rd 2026