Spin Cycle was the unique result of three simultaneous artist’s residencies at Spike Island artspace in Bristol. The three participating artists – Runa Islam, Damien Roach and Hiraki Sawa were resident together at Spike Island for three months, from June to September 2004, in order to produce new work towards this ambitious exhibition and publication project.

Challenging Relationships: Artists & Institutions was the culmination of a series of events that emerged from a year long period of activity by 12 artists and arts professionals working with Spike Island to develop research that scrutinised the roles that artists and audiences play in relation to the art institution.

The Spike in the City strand of off-site commissioning began in 2004 with VANiSH - a mobile art space developed by Ashley McCormick.

Ganghut emerged from an intense period when Kevin Reid and around fifteen others worked, ate and slept in the gallery at Spike Island in 2004.

MERGE DOWN AND RESIST was a four month research based art activity with three generations of Asian community in Bristol, initiated by Sanchayan Ghosh - the fifth recipient of the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship.

Open Studios in 2004 again provided a unique, informal opportunity to view, discuss and purchase from a hugely diverse range of art practice with the usually private working spaces of the artists' studios transforming themselves into a labyrinth of gallery spaces.

The exhibition Nanoq: Flat Out and Bluesome brought ten taxidermied bears from collections around the country to the exhibition space at Spike Island in 2004. 

This was the first in a series of seven images produced for Nuevas Floras, an ongoing project by Colombian artist María Elvira Escallón.

In June of 2003 Lucy Gunning took up a three month Moving Image Residency offered in collaboration with Picture This, the moving image commissioning agency that presents and provides services to artists, audiences and institutions and is based in the Spike Island building.

In 2003, Spike Island in asociation with Ladyfest Bristol presented Comic Book Queens, an exhibition of some of the best contemporary Comic Book art by women.