What a wonderful name for an exhibition: “Back to where we have not quite been”.  What mysteries, images and memories it conjures up?  The introductory brochure to the exhibition and the four day event that runs alongside it at the Arnolfili in Bristol, established as a centre for contemporary art in 1961, starts with a quotation from J G Ballard: “Just as psychoanalysis reconstructs the original traumatic situation in order to release the repressed material, so we are now being plunged back into the archaeopsychic past, uncovering the ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for decades….Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our blood streams are tributaries of the great seas of its total memory.”

For four days, a variety of ideas from anthropology, science and psychoanalysis will be blended together in different art forms engaging different senses, exploring new and creative ways of communicating.  The title could in some ways reflect the complexity of the Arnolfini as a building in the city which is both historic and modern. Outside is a robust stone dockside building; inside is an entirely different modern concrete building, very much of its era with concrete coffer ceilings and central staircase; it is at the windows looking out across the docks that the two come together,

The project is the culmination of a Bristol residency by isk knutsdotter of Fourthland, a London-based arts collaborative who explore themes across boundaries through participation and performance.  The themes of Land, Sea and Third Space run across the three galleries on the first floor of the Arnolfini, the white-painted rooms arranged around the central staircase, enabling visitors to dip in and out or follow them through in sequence, themes that reflect what can be seen through the windows of the Arnolfini, sitting on the historic dockside of Bristol, once a busy bustling port with the sea in one direction and land in the other.

In Land, a large new map of the landscape has been drawn with sticks tied with string and the room is full of objects that evoke memories of place and of history while, in the Sea, visitors are invited to taste a specially fermented drink “kept alive by the nurture of people for thousands of years.”  The Third Space is more immersive with the visitor invited to listen to stories and sounds while lying on and shaping a sculptural landscape on the floor of the gallery.

An interesting and engaging project which it would be good to develop further.