Exhibitions
Inherited with Yuko Edwards & Kelly O’Brien
16 October — 15 November 2026
Open:
Thursday - Sunday 12:00 - 18:00
Bristol Photo Festival brings together the work of Bristol-based local artists, Yuko Edwards and Kelly O’Brien. Both artists explore what is valued, inherited and made visible within family histories.
Join us from the preview Sunday 18th Oct from 2:00pm
Yuko Edwards — What You See in My Face
What You See in My Face begins with Yuko Edwards’ discovery of historical family negatives, prints, postcards and letters in her stepmother’s family home, recently inherited by her interracial parents. Within her work, the house becomes a living archive, containing traces of those who have belonged to the family and those yet to come. Edwards uses these materials to question how inheritance shapes identity within blended and mixed-race families, and how family histories exceed the fixed narratives suggested by biology or DNA.
Through reprinting, layering, reframing and annotating archival images, alongside family conversations and the insertion of her own image, voice and material traces, Edwards explores the archive as both evidence and omission. Her work asks where Black presence sits within an inherited visual history, and what happens when previously fragmented narratives are re-read and re-contextualised. Photography becomes not simply a record of the past, but an active space for negotiating memory, belonging, absence and connection.
Kelly O’Brien — No Rest for the Wicked
Kelly O’Brien explores domestic work by intertwining her family’s stories with issues of class, gender, and occupation, advocating for the visibility of working women and their struggles. In her works, the narrative shifts between the tensions of domestic burdens—a shadowed space where gender disparities persist—and the paradox of the home as a sanctuary. No Rest for the Wicked celebrates the home to reveal the invisible labour that underlies it. The project highlights the experiences of women whose work, both inside and outside the home, often goes unrecognised.