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Somerset Art Weeks Festival 2026 Somerset Art Weeks Festival 2026 will take place from 19th September to 4th October across more than 90 venues throughout Somerset, celebrating creativity, culture, and community across the county. This year’s festival theme Exploring Cultural Connections invites artists and visitors to explore ideas of migration, heritage, and the rich variety of interconnections that shape Somerset today. The county-wide festival features group exhibitions, curated shows, special commissions, and work from established and emerging artists, including creatives supported through SAW bursaries. Through a wide range of visual arts and crafts, audiences are invited to reflect on connections across histories, communities, landscapes, and species - from prehistoric to the present day, from human to more- than-human. Alongside exhibitions, the festival offers a programme of family-friendly workshops, events, and creative activities taking place each weekend. 19 September - 4 October: Locations throughout SOMERSET. somersetartworks.org.uk . FESTIVAL OF WESSEX 2026 • 32 ‘FIREFLIES’ Poulomi Basu: Always Coming Home Born in Kolkata in 1983, Poulomi is an eco-feminist and activist whose work looks at power, conflict, and climate change, and how these forces affect people’s lives and bodies. Much of her work focuses on women from the Global South, highlighting how systems of inequality and patriarchy shape, restrict, and weaponise women’s bodies. Her projects emerge as a response to both personal trauma and collective struggle. Bringing together moving image, sculpture, photography, and sound, Basu’s practice spans documentary, speculative fiction, and activism, and explores displacement and environmental injustice. Drawing inspiration from South Asian Futurism, the exhibition transforms the gallery into an immersive environment that shifts between different realities and speculative futures. Until 31 August: East Quay, WATCHET, TA23 0AQ. Tuesday - Sunday 10am - 6pm. 01984 263103 / eastquaywatchet.co.uk . JACK WEST ‘THE CAFE ROYAL’ (Oil on canvas, 2024) Kit Glaisyer: The Café Royal Kit Glaisyer’s Café Royal paintings transform an iconic roadside café in Bridport into a series of cinematic, psychologically charged landscapes that explore light, memory, nostalgia and the poetry of ordinary places. Drawing comparisons with Edward Hopper, Wim Wenders and American Pop Art, the series re-imagines a familiar local landmark as something both deeply personal and strangely mythic. Until 31 August: Bridport Contemporary, 11 Downes Street, BRIDPORT, DT6 3JR. Open every Saturday 10am - 3pm and by appointment. 07983 465789 / kitglaisyer.com. MADDIE ROCK