The London Open 2022
Marija Bozinovska Jones Beginningless Mind (rivers, rhythms, rituals) (2021), 12:19 mins Courtesy the artist © Frangipani Beatt.
The London Open 2022 captures the vibrancy and diversity of the capital’s art scene, reflecting the concerns of the next generation of artists and their insights in challenging times.
The 2022 edition features 46 artists’ works, offering a cross-section of the most dynamic talent from across London. It offers a journey through individual artists’ works and highlights the intersections of common interests, relationships and networks that make up the prolific and international London arts ecology. Embracing the nature of its open submission format, it includes painting, sculpture, moving image, installation and performance, from younger to established artists.
A seismic shift has happened in the artistic and cultural landscape since the last edition of The London Open in 2018. Moving from personal to collective concerns, the cathartic to the poetic, this exhibition traces huge social changes. It tracks the frustrating effects of the drawn-out exit from the EU, disconcertion as the city ground to a halt in spring 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, realisation of the scale of the destruction of our planet, and the urgency to end racism and to decolonise culture since the Black Lives Matter protests. Whilst the show itself was also postponed by a year, the works capture the impact of a ‘lost’ year, which gave society — and artists — the chance to pause, redefine priorities and identify urgencies.
The London Open 2022 is also a testament to the material impact on artists over the past four years and their resilience, as they continued to make work and found new ways of sharing it, experimenting with means available, from the kitchen table to the back garden, through videos and online exhibitions.
The call for entries attracted 2,600 applications and the 46 artists were selected by an expert panel comprising collector Maria Bukhtoyarova, artist Shezad Dawood, curator and art historian Christine Eyene, gallerist Stephan Tanbin Sastrawidjaja, with Whitechapel Gallery curators Emily Butler, Inês Costa and Wells Fray-Smith.
The London Open 2022 artists are: Chloe Abrahams, Baff Akoto, Nicole Bachmann, Jordan Baseman, Helen Benigson, Hazel Brill, Gareth Cadwallader, Rory Cahill and George Mackness, Gerard Ortín Castellví, Ami Clarke, William Cobbing, Maria Roy Deulofeu, Sonya Dyer, Eva Fàbregas, Jason File, Beth Fox, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Ian Giles, Patrick Goddard, Sunil Gupta, Eloise Hawser, Henry/Bragg, Sandi Hudson-Francis, Asuf Ishaq, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Julianknxx, Juliana Kasumu, Marianne Keating, Seema Khalique, Dawoon Kim, Alicia Reyes McNamara, Paula Morison, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Janette Parris, Will Pham, Madeleine Pledge, Candida Powell-Williams, Hussina Raja, Mohammed Sami, Inês Neto dos Santos, Peter Spanjer, Anna Chrystal Stephens, Milly Thompson, Ben Yau, Abbas Zahedi, Rafał Zajko.
The London Open 2022 is curated by Emily Butler, Curator, with Inês Costa, Assistant Curator and Wells Fray-Smith, Assistant Curator: Special Projects, Whitechapel Gallery.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue including essays and interviews with all participating artists and, for the first time, a dedicated microsite, functioning as a digital extension of the exhibition.
The London Open 2022
30 June – 4 September 2022
Media view: 29 June 2022
Galleries 1, 8 & 9
Free Entry
Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High St
London
E1 7QX
For more information visit Whitechapel Gallery
