Conversation with Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp

Ecotones: Where the Urban and Rural Embrace, is a year-long programme of events and activities as part of Spike Island’s Engagement programme, supported by Hauser & Wirth. Working alongside interdisciplinary artists, the programme invites young people and local communities to explore notions of belonging, untold histories, and relationships with the more-than-human world; producing alternative modes of connection with their localities.

Here, Flo reflects on the development of her research with Saphia Abrahamovitch-Venner, Spike Island’s Assistant Curator: Artist Development and Engagement.

Saphia Abrahamovitch-Venner
Perhaps we could start by talking about your practice, what you do and how you got to where you are.

Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp
I'm a Bristol based writer, curator and producer; and currently a Curatorial Fellow for Spike Island and Hauser & Wirth. For the fellowship I’m developing an engagement program called Ecotones: Where the Urban and Rural Embrace.

I've been in academia since 2018, and recently completed my PhD. Before that, I was working as an arts producer and assistant curator across visual arts and performance with Bristol-based organisations including Watershed, In Between Time, Cirque Bijou, and Smithson Projects. I then wanted to delve deeper into contemporary arts and performance theory, so moved to Amsterdam to study an MA at Utrecht University, which led me to my PhD with the University of Surrey. This academic training developed a critical understanding of my practice as a writer, researcher and curator, which puts emphasis on thinking alongside artists engaging with the more-than-human world. I look to support artistic practice in relational and reciprocal ways, whether that is engaging critically through written text, or working alongside artists to facilitate their ideas. I'm particularly interested in how interdisciplinary arts practice can embrace performance methodologies.

SAV
Where did your interest in performance come from?

FFA
It's probably in my genetics. My father is a professor of contemporary performance, and my mother is a writer with a background in fine art and theatre. They both studied and taught at Dartington College of Arts, so I was exposed to experimental performance practice from a young age, and here I am following in their footsteps!

SAV
You touched on your PhD work, which considers the ethics of interspecies relations in contemporary art and performance from an intersectional perspective. Can you tell us what interspecies relations means to you, and how this research is relevant in contemporary performance and arts practice?

FFA
I understand interspecies relations as how we as humans relate to the more-than-human world. My research looks at the ethics of how contemporary artists are encountering other species through interdisciplinary practice, with particular attention to how artists are navigating and negotiating complex power relations with animals. However interspecies relations in the arts can also be about how artists encounter nonhuman environments, habitats and all the other living entities and beings we share this planet with. It is urgent that ‘we’, particularly in the West, reshape relations to the nonhuman world. We are living in a time of multispecies crisis, where dominant planetary relations are so destructive and extractive. I’m interested in how that is also deeply entangled with the oppression of marginalised human groups.

I think the way that we relate to animals is very entangled with how we relate across difference generally. In hierarchical Western ideologies, animals have always been subjugated, and by comparing some human groups to animals, this patterns violent modes of dehumanisation. So it's really important that we rethink and reimagine dominant relations to animals and the non-human world more broadly.

Contemporary art and performance allows for not only the imagining of new ways of being, but actually putting those ways of being into practice through affective experimentation. I think artistic practice is a really exciting creative site to explore the possibilities of more reciprocal and empathetic relations with the nonhuman world. Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and I gathered together a vibrant selection of thinkers and artists working in these ways in our book Interspecies Performance.

SAV
You touched on an interesting idea there, comparing how we relate to animals to how humans also relate to each other, and how we see and understand our differences in society. How does this intersectional perspective inform your curatorial practice, directly or indirectly, and how you are activating that research?

FFA
I'm specifically thinking about what an ‘interspecies’ feminist ethics in arts and performance might look and feel like. For me, feminism, and particularly intersectional feminism, can be radically inclusive, beyond humans alone. The way we understand power across difference in terms of race, gender, different bodies and different species is all entangled; I aim to address these connections through my research and curatorial practice by opening up invitations, and entering into dialogue with a diverse group of artists exploring nonhuman relations in more affirmative ways.

In my work, I aim to include lots of perspectives and forms of lived experience. Ecotones: Where the Urban and Rural Embrace will include lots of different voices, both in relation to artists and relevant communities.

SAV
Could you tell us about understanding of the term ecotone, and how your PhD research interests are manifesting through the Ecotones program?

FFA
An ecotone is a term from ecology; it’s when two different environments, for example water and land, meet, embrace, clash and transform each other. However, my understanding of ecotones really comes from the theorist Astrida Neimanis and her essay ‘Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water’, which explores how feminism has its own ecotones. As we learn from intersectional theory, feminism is not simply about gender, but is stretched and transformed when it meets, for example, animal studies, critical race theory or disability. Feminism is not fixed, it has porous edgelands; I really love this as a concept to think with.

The Ecotones programme looks at the relationship between urban and rural environments, but also the ecotones within those environmental contexts - what happens when rural environments meet queerness, or when rural environments meet disability? What happens when nature and animals meet urban space? These are all ecotones that I'm inviting different artists, facilitators and communities to respond to in creative, playful, embodied ways.

As an example, we're working with the amazing Hermione Spriggs, who is an artist, anthropologist and keen animal tracker. Hermione will be collaborating with writer, artist and forager Tamara Colchester to engage a group of young people from Creative Youth Network in Bristol in an urban animal tracking workshop. I think this is really exciting; there's this notion that urban animals are pests or vermin, and the dominant mode of relationship with these animals is to exterminate them and exclude them from urban life, when actually, they're such a vibrant and abundant part of our cities and urban spaces. I think it will be really fascinating to introduce ideas of how we might connect to these animals differently through intimate tracking processes facilitated by these two creative thinkers.

SAV
I'm really excited for that workshop. It was so interesting when Hermione came to visit and started asking questions around animals and ‘pest control’ within our building. I'm really excited to sit with a group of young people and think about how we could shift that narrative.

FFA
I think that's super interesting. Art spaces are generally very exclusionary of any sort of non-human presence, mainly for protection of the artwork; but what happens when we let these disruptive creatures in, might it change our relationship to the value of art?

SAV
Could you tell us a bit more about the next steps for the fellowship and any other events that you have planned?

FFA
I don't want to be too specific at this point, it’s important to allow the program to emerge through relationships and new connections. I can tell you that our opening event on Thursday 5 June will be based at Spike Island in collaboration with Room 13 in Hareclive, who are an amazing group of primary school age children, recently awarded an exciting commission by the University of Bristol to create work exploring local river ecologies. They’ll be part of the event, along with Andrew Sanger, who is a dancer interested in how we can attune to our environment through the body. It will be a playful, informal opening that engages with the literal ecotone of Spike Island, where the river meets the city, crashing into it and transforming it.

Beyond that, we're exploring various themes in the programme. We're looking at a participatory walk in rural Somerset, beginning at Hauser & Wirth, using creative methodologies to explore how queerness manifests in rural environments, for both human and nonhuman communities. Other developing themes include plant-listening in controlled environments, the accessibility of rural arts organisations for disabled artists and audiences, and urban food cultures.

Overall Ecotones will include international artists, national artists and South West based artists, as well as different community groups that represent urban and rural communities. I am excited to also engage with Hauser & Wirth’s Arthaus group, a community of young people aged 15 to 19 who share a passion for art. It's important to me that this programme nourishes existing connections and encourages cross pollination between South West-based arts organisations.

SAV
Could we talk more about your interest in working collaboratively, where did that come from?

FFA
I think from trying to resist the individualistic mode of being that's so prominent in the West particularly. Canonical art history is very much concerned with individuals; I see collaboration as a form of resistance to this, of embracing how ideas and creativity are born in relationship to the world around us and in relationship to other people. Different lived experiences, different ways of knowing the world, different opinions and different approaches are needed to generate new ideas and thinking. Engagement and collaborative methodologies can encourage a more collective way of working, and help shed this notion of self-importance, especially within the arts.

SAV
It’s so true. Some of my favourite events at Spike Island have been workshops and tours with young people, particularly those who don’t come from an arts background - the questions that they ask are just fantastic. They can see things, like you said, from a completely different perspective, and it makes me question the work in a new way.

FFA
That element of the unexpected is what it's all about. That's how new ideas emerge, and challenge our ways of working. Again, in relation to my own research, those collaborations don't have to be human – creative collaborators can be animals, they can be plants, and they always bring unexpected offerings. I like to curate spaces and encourage practice that is open and sensitive to the agency of both people and other beings.

SAV
What do you feel this fellowship and the opportunity to work across two organisations offers you as a freelance curator?

FFA
As a freelance curator, it's a wonderful context within which to explore and realise my ideas. I have been in academia for a while now, so to be able to activate my research in the arts sector in the context of this partnership is really exciting. It gives me the opportunity to learn from both organisations, and there’s a spirit of generosity and trust in enabling me to develop and build relationships and explore what comes out of those interactions.

SAV
Is there one thing that you'd like to come out of the fellowship, or one legacy you might like to leave for future fellows? We’ve talked before about leaving ‘traces’ of the program, so for every workshop or interaction, there's a record or trace of what's happened, which can be left for future participants or fellows.

FFA
I think this is a really interesting and useful question. A year-long engagement programme that focuses on one-off or short-term events raises a tension in relation to the quality of engagement. Legacy is a complex topic in the arts generally, but how do you approach that within the practical confines of these programmes? I think one way way of embedding legacy is by building resources through different activities, events or happenings – traces that might be passed on to another curatorial fellow or group, who can then engage with that resource or take it in a different direction and develop it in their own way.

The Spike Island and Hauser & Wirth fellowship programme is over three years, there will be two more fellows after me and whilst people will be bringing their own ideas and ways of working, there’s an opportunity to build on what has already been established and developed.

Another way of embedding legacy is by nurturing the relationships that already exist in the context of the two organisations. I've approached some new community partners, but am conscious of also tending to previously established and ongoing relationships.

Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp (PhD) is a Bristol-based writer, curator, and producer. Her recent Techne-funded doctoral research considered the ethics of interspecies relations in contemporary art and performance from an intersectional perspective. Fitzgerald-Allsopp has curated and produced projects across visual arts and performance for cultural organisations including Cove Park, Scotland; DAS, Amsterdam; CCA, Glasgow; Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam; and In Between Time, Bristol. She is the recipient of the 2025-2026 Spike Island and Hauser and Wirth Engagement Fellowship for South West-based Curators.

Fitzgerald-Allsopp’s book Interspecies Performance, co-edited with Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, was published in 2024 by Performance Research Books. Her writing has been commissioned by artists and galleries internationally, including SLQS Gallery, London; Co-Prosperity, Chicago; Handmark, Australia; and K-Gold Temporary Gallery, Greece.

Saphia Abrahamovitch-Venner is a curator, artist mentor and events producer based in Bristol. As Assistant Curator: Artist Development and Engagement at Spike Island, Saphia manages Spike Island Associates, a professional development network for creative practitioners. She works on Spike Island’s annual Open Studios, the Syllabus programme and other artist development opportunities. Saphia also coordinates Spike Island’s public engagement activities, curating creative activities for children, young people and local communities.

Ecotones: Where the Urban and Rural Embrace is commissioned by Spike Island and Hauser & Wirth, as part of a three-year initiative aiming to support the professional development of artists, young people and independent art workers based in the region.