Artists pop up in shopping mall

22nd May 2013

We do like a pop-up shop and here’s a pop-up with a difference, within a shopping mall. The Mall Galleries shopping centre in central Bristol is using an empty space to host artists who are decorating 5 foot tall statues of the Aardman character, Gromit, to raise money for charity.

Photo by Tristan Colangelo on Unsplash

Photo by Tristan Colangelo on Unsplash

Shoppers can spy on the artists through the shop window as they paint and draw on eight different Gromits over the next few weeks in one of the vacant retail spaces in the shopping centre. There are seventy in all being decorated to locate across the city for a summer trail. After the trail the Gromits will be auctioned to raise money for the Grand Appeal that supports Bristol’s Childrens Hospital.

The Gromit trail follows on from Bristol Zoo’s gorilla trail that happened across Bristol a couple of years ago, where visitors and residents alike could use a free paper map to find and visit locations across the city to see different life sized gorillas, not silverback but multi-coloured.

This summer it’s Gromit’s turn to be redecorated by famous artists, illustrators, animators, designers and plain-old celebrities from Bristol and beyond. It’s a great example of animating an empty retail space in a way that both pulls in visitors to a shopping centre and benefits charity.