Arts Festival Welcomes Launch Of 10th Annual Open Exhibition

An annual competition celebrating the very best in contemporary art is set to reveal three worthy winners later this week.

Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival is returning on Friday 11 September with another unmissable exhibition to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

However, this year's exhibition is set to introduce an exciting new flavour after organisers ripped up the rulebook to make way for one or two changes, including a wider submissions boundary, accepting entries from across all art forms and awarding three fantastic prizes.

This year also welcomed guest curator Marie Jones and an impressive panel of judges from some of the North West's leading venues, including Mariama Attah (Open Eye Gallery Curator, Liverpool), Chris Bailkoski (PROFORMA & Soup Kitchen Director, Manchester), Paulette Terry Brien (Grundy Art Gallery Curator, Blackpool), Jane McLean (Cheshire Dance Creative Director), Matthew Pendergast (Castlefield Gallery Curator, Manchester) and Lesley Taker (FACT Exhibitions Manager, Liverpool).

Now, after a thorough judging process of almost 450 entries, competition organisers are ready to reveal this year's winners and open the 2020 exhibition to the public.

Leah Biddle, Culture Manager for Culture Warrington, said: "After almost six months of solely consuming arts and culture via a computer screen, I am delighted to welcome back Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival's Open exhibition.

"To celebrate the exhibition's 10th year, we have introduced a new way of working and challenged ourselves to diversify the exhibition and I couldn't be happier with the result.

"The stellar judging panel and the quality of work superbly curated by Marie Jones has really taken the annual exhibition to the next level.

"I am delighted to see that the inclusion of performance, animation and film submissions has been a welcome addition and has created a new opportunity for a wider variety of artists.

"The calibre of work submitted this year has been truly outstanding and I can't wait to reveal all of our successful entries when the exhibition opens on Friday."

The three winners of the 2020 Open Competition will be announced via Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival's social media pages from 5pm on Thursday 10 September.

This year's exhibition will run from Friday 11 September to Sunday 20 December at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery.

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