Coventry Open 2023
Coventry Open 2023: showcasing work by West Midlands artists
Free | Drop-in
Set up to showcase local talent and provide selling opportunities for artists, Coventry Open celebrates the quality and diversity of art being produced in Coventry and the wider West Midlands region. Our 2023 exhibition is the twelfth Coventry Open, and the first to include a young people's showcase, giving artists aged 15-18 a chance to exhibit their work in a professional gallery setting.
Visual artists working in any medium were invited to submit images and supporting information about their work via an online submissions portal in early January.
A £1000 prize was awarded to one winning entry chosen by the independent judging panel alongside an additional prize for the Young People's showcase winner:
Find out more about the winners here
Judging Panel:
ANNA BERRY
Self-taught UK artist Anna Berry is best known for her grass roots interventions in non-gallery environments, as well as large scale immersive installation.
Because her work encompasses a wide variety of processes and ideas, it can be hard to pin down, but it often involves non-archival materials, long repetitive making, and short-lived ephemeral outcomes. As such, her practise operates at the intersection of making, performance, installation, and recording. Her work is responsive to place, community, and politics, and is often concerned with our experiences of reality.
Anna was born in Glasgow, but is currently based in Milton Keynes. She is also a musician, writer and photographer.
Selected shows include: Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open 2021, MK Calling at Milton Keynes Gallery, Tate Exchange with Shape Arts, and South Bank Centre with Unlimited.
RENE MATIĆ
Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough) is an artist, writer and poet based in London. Their work spans across photography, film and sculpture in a meeting place they describe as rude(ness) – to interrupt and exist in/between. Matić often takes their departure point from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska and 2-Tone, using them as sites to queer and re-imagine the intimacies between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain.
Matić’s work is in several prominent collections including Tate, London, UK; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, FR; UK Government Art Collection, London, UK; Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK. Matić is represented by Arcadia Missa Gallery.
Recent solo exhibitions include: UPON THIS ROCK, Kunstverign Gartenhaus, Vienna, AT (2023), UPON THIS ROCK, South London Gallery, London, UK (2022), in spite of, instead of, Quench Gallery, Margate, UK (2022), flags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do, Arcadia Missa, London, UK (2021), Born British Die British, VITRINE Gallery, London, UK (2021).
DOMINIQUE NOK
Dominique Nok is a Black female portrait photographer and curator. With more than 20 years’ experience as a commercial photographer, she has been a magazine editor and has a bachelor’s degree in (photo) Journalism and a Masters in Curating. Dominique is passionate about working with female artists from the African diaspora and from Black, Asian and Global Majority heritage.
NILUPA YASMIN
Nilupa Yasmin is an award-winning artist and educator with a primarily lens-based practice. She explores the principles of art and craft and the expanded materiality within photography.
The artist is interested in the notion of culture, self-identity, and anthropology. Whilst investigating ideals and traditions that are close to home, she repeatedly draws upon her own identity through gender, religion and her British Bangladeshi culture and heritage. An element of her practice focuses on socially engaged photography, she works collaboratively with various communities to produce and curate works of Art.
Within her educational programme she implements and highlights feminist narratives focusing on women of colour, alongside offering an alternative perspective to westernised art books.
Yasmin’s work is included in many permanent and private collections including Government Art Collection, The New Art Gallery Walsall and Birmingham Museums Collection. She is Lecturer in Photography at Coventry University and is recently completing her MA in Photography Arts at University of Westminster. Nilupa is a studio holder at Grand Union, Birmingham.