Leamington Open Art Exhibition 2026

I am currently exhibiting in the Leamington Open 2026 Art Exhibition in Leamington Spa Museum and Art Gallery. It is a biennial exhibition.

There are all sorts of reasons that an artist may decide to enter an open art exhibition. I have had both good and bad experiences and thought I would reflect on participating in the Leamington Open as it has been a good experience and I feel at the moment we need to hear more positive things!

Open Art Exhibitions are a great way to have your work seen by the general public, collectors, curators and galleries. However it can be risky as there is no guarantee that your work will be chosen and there is usually a cost associated with submitting work as well as associated costs if selected of transporting the artwork to the exhibition space.

There were three judges selecting the work: Andrew Barker who is an author and screenwriter, Frances McGowan who is an artist working across photography and sculpture and Rebecca Savage from the History of Art Department at the University of Birmingham.

There were 300 entries for this open call (I’m pretty sure that’s what they said at the preview) from which artworks by 47 artists were selected. I was thrilled that both of my submitted works were selected especially as this is the first time these artworks have been seen in public.

So for me this was a great validation of my new work and also interesting to see it hung in a large space with other artworks. I am pleased it looked so good and this is due to the great job done by the curators.

This exhibition has a longstanding good reputation and excellent curators which are both really important to me because as an artist I want to be part of something that is worthwhile.

It was good to see such a variety of work in media and style working so well together to create a coherent and interesting show.

Leamington Open 2026 runs until May 3^rd 2026.