Exhibition on journalist murdered in rainforest
THE life and work of a campaigning journalist from Bristol who was killed in the Amazon rainforest two years ago is to be celebrated in an event and exhibition in the city next month.
The exhibition will highlight the work and legacy of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who were killed in Brazil in June 2022 while investigating the plight of indigenous tribes battling illegal logging gangs destroying the rainforest.
Dom Phillips began his journalism career in Bristol, setting up an events magazine, and worked for many years in the city in the 1990s before heading for a new life as an author and journalist in Brazil a decade ago. Now an exhibition celebrating his work is to be held.
The exhibition is entitled For Dom, Bruno and the Amazon, and will be opened on June 9, running for a week at the Mount Without Crypt, just off St Michael’s Hill in Bristol.
The exhibition has been put together by Alison Cahn, and Dom’s nieces Dominique Davies and Rhiannon Davies.
It has been touring the country since September 2022 to carry on Dom’s campaign.
“Dom and Bruno were on a final research trip for Dom’s book about the struggles of indigenous people for the sustainable development of the Amazon,” said a spokesperson for the exhibition.
“Their murder led to an international outcry against their murder and highlighted the short-sighted despoliation of the Amazon’s resources by extractive industries – logging, cattle ranching, mining and illegal fishing,” she added.
“The exhibition aims to carry on Dom and Bruno’s campaign of education and resistance to despoliation of the Amazon – the beating heart of the climate crisis,” she said.
“Dom had strong Bristol connections.
He was a journalist here in the late ’80s and early ’90s, co-editing New City Press, broadcasting New City Sounds on Spec FM, and was instrumental in the seminal Hard Sell charity fundraising album, an early showcase of what became known as ‘the Bristol Sound’.
“Dom then went on to work for, and subsequently edit, Mixmag, at the heart of the dance music revolution,” she said.
Dom went on to be a freelance journalist and author writing for titles across the world, and he was working on his book How to Save the Amazon: Ask the People Who Know when he was killed alongside Bruno, an expert in indigenous peoples of the Amazon, who was assisting Dom.
The book will be published posthumously by Manilla Press next spring.