Mixtape will open this Tuesday evening, Tuesday October 4th, another carefully curated group show, this time we’re joined by 38 invited artists making it a busy line up of 40 contemporary artists sharing space and hopefully cross-pollinating. It is very much a mixtape that we’ve made, a compilation tape of painters, printers, collage makers for you to dip into and explore. Mixtape will once again be an on-line exhibition, it will once again be hosted on Cultivate’s sister website and home of Organ magazine, www.organthing.com. The full list of  participating artist reads like this –

ANNIE GENDREAU, ARTHUR ROBERTS, CARLA LOBMIER, CHRISTOPHER TANSEY, CLARA LEMOS, DAN BROUGHTON, DOMINIC BLOWER, EMMA HARVEY, EMMA TOD, HELEN RAWLINS, IAN BERTRAM, JAMES JOHNSTON, JENNY KLEIN, JEREMY MORGAN, JOAN POPE, JULIA MADDISON, JULIETTE LOSQ, KAREN DAVIES, LARA BROECKE, LIDIA LIDIA, LISA DENYER, LISA ROBINSON, LIZ GRIFFITHS, LUCIA BOAGHE, MADELEINE STRINDBERG, MAGDALENA BAK, MARK BURRELL, MELIKE, MIKADO KOKO, PATRICIA FIGUEIREDO, PETER A LEIGH, RICHARD BENBOW, RICHARD KITCHEN, ROBERT MONDOUX, RUTH BATHAM, SEAN WORRALL, SRIPEY J. KEMFOR, SUZIE PINDAR, TORI DAY and VICKI SALMI 

This will be the 25th online show since Red opened in 2017 (and something like the 176th show or event from Cultivate in all).  We like these on-line shows, we were doing them way before Covid came along, we see no reason to stop now the notions of Lockdown are (we hope) in the rear view mirror, what we like about on-line shows is that it takes us out beyond the London art bubbles, it allows us enter homes all over the land and indeed the globe, it allows us to include artists from Yorkshire, Wales, Brazil, Turkey, North America alongside artists from down the road here in East London who are more likely to feature in our physical events.  Previous Cultivate on-line shows have been viewed from all over the world be tens of thousands of people, we expect a very busy opening this Tuesday.  

Once again you will find what we think is a healthy mix of familiar names to Cultivate followers alongside artists who haven’t worked with us before. It is one of the pleasures of an open call to go explore new artists we might not have heard of or looked at properly before  (we have no idea why galleries should charge people to submit to an open call as if the process is some great inconveneice, it is part of the excitement of being a curator, we love the response to open calls)  We’re rather proud of the fact that so many new artists get to show with us, that some stick around and become regulars and well, yes, some do rather use us as a stepping stone and then move on and pull up the ladder behind them but we do like to think it is about artists coming together proactively to make things happen and we do like the fact that Cultivate has helped open doors for so many artists. We’ve lost count now but we think the number of artists who have shown work with is closer to three thousand that two thousand since that first chaotic show down Vyner Street, here in East London, in 2011.

And so Mixtape opens tomorrow evening, it follows on from the recent Three x Three (Part 5)  on line show that opened a couple of weeks ago and proceeds the next Three x Three show that opens later this month (and yes we are working on Mixtape No.2 already).  We are embarked on a new season of on-line art exhibitions after a summer when we were focussed on our own work and a Spring that saw four rather succesful monthly on-line shows from Cultivate – and yes, once an on-line show opens, we see no reason to close that show, you can view all of Cultivate’s previous on-line shows here on the Organ website.

Mixtape will open at 7pm on Tuesday 4th October, we hope you will take a look and then maybe investigate some of the participating artists a little more. It is all about following the links. We’ve enjoyed putting this one together. We’ll post a direct link once the show is open