THE Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal has launched an innovative art competition open for both professional and non-professional artists from the north of England.
Open Up North 2014 will culminate in a multi-venue exhibition across Kendal from May 31 to July 27 with a prize fund in surplus of £3000.
Following the success of the competition and exhibition in 2011 in which over 200 artists took part, the Brewery Arts Centre is ‘pleased’ to announce the return of the novel arts competition.
In 2011, Open Up North, saw 206 artists enter a total of 384 artworks with 150 pieces of work in the exhibition.
All of the works should be submitted via an online portal at www.openupnorth.org which will open on Monday March 3. The competition is open to any 2D artforms; including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, digital and 3D wall mountable work.
The exhibition will be shown in venues across Kendal, including all gallery spaces in the Brewery Arts Centre, the Abbot Hall Art Gallery Coffee House and the Kendal College Castle Dairy.
Judges taking part this year are Helen Watson, director of collections and exhibitions at the Lakeland Arts Trust, Kwong Lee, director of Castlefield Gallery in Manchester and Estelle Lovatt, art critic and regular guest on BBC radio and TV, Sky News, and lecturer at Hampstead School of Art, London.
Developing the Brewery’s programme to support emerging artists across all art forms including theatre and literature, emerging artists who enter Open Up North will be eligible to attend a series of professional development sessions across northern England and three selected artists will benefit from a programme of mentoring coordinated by the Brewery Arts Centre’s Emerging Artist Programme in partnership with the Castlefield Gallery in Manchester.
This pioneering programme will be funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and will give the artists the opportunity to develop their artistic work and careers through workshops, master classes and mentoring sessions and will run from June 2014 until May 2015.
The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK, making grants of £30 to £35 million annually towards a wide range of work within the arts, education and learning, the environment and social change.
For more information visit http://www.breweryarts.co.uk/art/open-up-north
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