CYPRUS OPEN STUDIOS 2018

Cyprus Open Studios 2018

Registration 1 March to 30 June

Open Studios 6 to 14 October

As you will see, Cyprus Open Studios will look a little different this year.  In previous years you had a maximum of 8 days to open your studio/workspace. These were always geared for the weekends. 2018 offers you a minimum of any TWO out of 9 consecutive days, e.g. from 6 to 14 October 2018. You could, of course, open every day!

It has come to our notice that most working people who live away from the coast make a bee-line for the sea during the weekends, especially since October is still very much in season. It is mainly for this reason that we have decided to cater for inland artists during the week. We have also discovered that this is the norm for open studio events across the world. This means that you will be able to choose your dates to be open, rather than your weekends. We are confident that this will suit artists and visitors better than diluting it across the whole month. We will also be able to throw more resources at it.

The other big change is that we have decided to give participants the opportunity to recover from the Christmas mayhem and open registration on 1 March, with a closing date of 30 June 2018. You will still have 4 months in which to register, finalise artwork and plan your space before the August holidays!

And here’s another plus:  If you really, honestly, truly do not wish to open your studio/workspace/home to visitors, we offer you a reduced membership of Cyprus Open Studios. As a ‘non-participating’ member, this will give you a page on the website with up to 8 images plus your biography, artist statement and other information. This will be featured as an option on the registration page when we open on 1 March 2018.

We are now in our third year and the initial logistics problems have mainly been sorted out. Of course, when we do new things, new things have to be learned!

One of those new things is the work that we undertake on behalf of the artists who wish to participate in exhibitions abroad. This year, there are 14 who have jumped at the opportunity to simply produce their work and let “Open Galleries Abroad (OGA)” take care of everything for them, ranging from registration with each gallery, submission of work for judging, transportation of the artwork, submission of the actual work for hanging at each venue, transportation in between exhibitions and safe storage when not being exhibited.

As usual, we will attempt acceptance at the Royal Academy of Art and after that comes the exhibition at the Salon des Refusés. There is a third venue lined up, name the Hellenic Centre – all of these in London.

This is a huge learning curve as we research venues, procedures, and logistics. The person in charge of this operation is Marina Emphietzi Harris, one of the three partners of Cyprus Open Studios. One of the biggest headaches is this… 

Yes,  transportation!

Another new idea we are toying with is to use a gallery in Limassol where all the artists who do not have their own studios or who, for personal reasons wish not to open their homes to the public, may showcase their work. This will be regarded as a gallery show and not an open studio. It will also be subject to a higher fee for the participant who chooses this path and there may well be a commission charged by the gallery. This is VERY MUCH in the planning stages at this point; we will update you as soon as we know more.

You may know that www.art-en-route-cyprus.com has now been incorporated in Cyprus Open Studios. This means that the sponsor of the Prize Draw that we offer each year no longer exists. However, we are working on something even better that should attract a whole raft of interested people to visit studios in order to enter. A small hint:  3 nights (maybe 5) free accommodation on a Greek island… we are working on it! 

There is just one final point we need to impress upon you:  If you are able to host an artist friend of yours from abroad, this guest will not be charged a membership fee but will still be featured on the website and in the catalogue. I’m sure you have many artist friends who would love to visit you in Cyprus for a few days! Let’s show them what hospitality looks like.