Linda Brothwell is a visual artist based at Spike Island in Bristol who works internationally. She trained in goldsmithing, silversmithing, metalwork and jewellery and is interested in heritage, place-making and how people look after their surroundings. Her multi-disciplinary practice casts her as a maker of objects, tools and publicly sited interventions.
Her focus for Bristol Beacon is to create a work for the façade of the Lantern building.
Linda says: “This will be the first permanent public artwork that I’ve done in the UK and it’s particularly meaningful to me that it will be in the city in which I’ve lived and worked for almost a decade.
“I wanted to look at the history of the building, what’s happened around it and on this street during its history and use that narrative to create an elegant and joyful solution on a scale appropriate to the building. The piece I’m creating is being developed with a high quality of craftsmanship, with exquisite detail and colour, using materials that are sympathetic to and resonate with both the building and the city.”
Linda's multi-disciplinary practice casts her as a maker of objects, tools and publicly sited interventions. In the past ten years she has been pioneering a new understanding of the significance of British crafts skills and tools illustrating the importance of their value to economic, social and cultural development.
She trained in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery. She works primarily to commission and is interested in heritage, place-making and how people look after their surroundings as evidenced in her series of works “Acts of Care” in which she ‘replaces’ missing letters within signage on iconic buildings. This series initiated a repair movement in the arts and earned recognition through international gallery support, the Jerwood Makers Open (2013) and a place on the Design of the Year shortlist (2009).
Linda is a graduate of The Royal College of Art, where she is now a lecturer, and a Churchill Fellow since 2019.
Her focus for Bristol Beacon is to create a work for the façade of the Lantern building.
Linda says: “This will be the first permanent public artwork that I’ve done in the UK and it’s particularly meaningful to me that it will be in the city in which I’ve lived and worked for almost a decade.
“I wanted to look at the history of the building, what’s happened around it and on this street during its history and use that narrative to create an elegant and joyful solution on a scale appropriate to the building. The piece I’m creating is being developed with a high quality of craftsmanship, with exquisite detail and colour, using materials that are sympathetic to and resonate with both the building and the city.”
Linda's multi-disciplinary practice casts her as a maker of objects, tools and publicly sited interventions. In the past ten years she has been pioneering a new understanding of the significance of British crafts skills and tools illustrating the importance of their value to economic, social and cultural development.
She trained in Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery. She works primarily to commission and is interested in heritage, place-making and how people look after their surroundings as evidenced in her series of works “Acts of Care” in which she ‘replaces’ missing letters within signage on iconic buildings. This series initiated a repair movement in the arts and earned recognition through international gallery support, the Jerwood Makers Open (2013) and a place on the Design of the Year shortlist (2009).
Linda is a graduate of The Royal College of Art, where she is now a lecturer, and a Churchill Fellow since 2019.
Acts of Care - Bench Repair Project, 2021
Conversations in Making, 2019
The Tool Appreciation Society, Hull, 2017
Acts of Care - The Lost Letters of Liverpool, 2015
Acts of Care - The Sheffield Edition, 2013 
Acts of Care - Bench Repair Project, Lisbon 2009
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