CALL: Artizan Women’s Open Exhibition 2026

Artizan
2 days ago
9 min read

Artizan Women’s Open

Person in a gallery holding a drink, admiring colourful abstract paintings on white walls. Art creates a vibrant, reflective mood. — *Image from the preview of the Artizan Women's Open 2024*

The narrative for women in the arts over the past twelve months has been one of stark dualities. On the surface, 2025 was a year of historic breakthroughs. We witnessed a "Correction" in full force as auction houses reached new heights; in May 2024, Leonora Carrington’s Les Distractions de Dagobert fetched $28.5 million at Sotheby’s - a record for a British-born woman artist that signalled a long-overdue market validation of female Surrealism. This momentum was mirrored in private spheres, with the Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025 reporting that work by women reached a seven-year high of 44% within the portfolios of high-net-worth collectors.

However, this often masked a more complex and stagnant reality. While the market celebrates historical figures, contemporary institutional progress remains slow. The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) continues to highlight that, globally, only 13.7% of artists represented by major galleries are women - a figure that has barely moved despite a year of high-profile "inclusion" initiatives.

This plateau is now being reenforced by technology. Research shows a significant bias in generative AI, finding that for neutral prompts such as "a portrait of a great artist," models defaulted to male-coded imagery over 80% of the time. This "digital erasure" was met in early 2025 by the viral "Invisible Woman" campaign, highlighting how the "male gaze" is being baked into the future of creative technology, restricting women to passive roles as "muses" rather than creators.

Furthermore, data from the latest Burns Halperin Report audits reveals that progress has entered a period of concerning "Correction Fatigue." In major museums, works by women still account for just 11% of acquisitions, and equity-focused budgets were cut globally with museum programming for women slipping back into the safer territory of group shows, rather than the career-defining solo exhibitions required for true parity.

Perhaps most telling was the 2025 "Artists Speak" report from SMU DataArts, which pulled back the curtain on the daily lived experience of women in the industry. The report identified a persistent "Maternal Wall" and a significant disparity in unpaid labour, revealing that women artists are still disproportionately burdened by administrative and domestic tasks that fragment creative time. We see a world where women are increasingly "visible" in the news, yet still economically, digitally, and spatially squeezed in the studio and the gallery.

The Return of the Women’s Open

The Artizan Women’s Open returns for 2026 to keep this conversation going. Three years of incredible support has shown us that our artists and audiences want to have this conversation as much as we do.

For 2026, we are evolving. Whilst maintaining our traditional, high-standard Open Call for those who wish to lead with the work alone, we’re also introducing new, thematic entries for those who wish to explicitly address some of the key barriers faced within the industry.

We hope this will provide space for everyone to contribute to the conversation and also allow us to expand the exhibitions potential to bring awareness of critical narratives for women artists. Your contribution is vital to this record.

Submission Models for 2026

You may submit works within any of the following four categories (mixing between categories is allowed). These categories allow you to contextualise your work on your own terms; they do not change the fundamental standard of the exhibition but rather expand how we talk about the work on the walls. You can submit under multiple categories up to a maximum of 6 works.

Advice to Applicants

The nature of this diversified call means there are a lot of moving parts. We advise reading through the various options and consider submitting to a maximum of two themes. Once you know what categories you want to submit under, check the submission notes and sizes carefully, and make sure you have all the information for your submission to hand (work titles, dimensions, images etc. as well as any special fields). And if in doubt, talk to us.

01. THE OPEN CALL (Standard Entry)

This remains our traditional entry model and the core of the Women’s Open. It is designed for artists who wish to engage with the exhibition as they always have: by submitting their best work to be judged on its own merits, free from a thematic lens. This continues to be our central model, celebrating the autonomy and excellence of women artists.

Notes:

This is a commercial category, works are submitted for sale.
This category is for completed works in any media.
You can submit up to the submission limit of 6 works under this category.

Sizes:

2D Single has a maximum dimension of 75cm in any direction (i.e. 1 of your 6 entries)
2D Double has a maximum dimension of 100cm in any direction (i.e. 2 of your 6 entries)
3D Single has a maximum dimension of 75cm in any direction
3D Double has a maximum dimension of 120cm in any direction

02. BARRIERS (The Social Invoice)

The BARRIERS category looks to share an audit of the creative “cost”, inviting artists to submit finished works alongside testimony of the work that went into creating them.

Most gallery visitors only see the finished piece. They don’t see the "hidden" side of being an artist: the late nights, the unpaid admin, or the struggle to balance work with family life. In 2025, research showed that the arts sector often relies on "passion exploitation," where artists are expected to work for free just to keep their careers going.

We want to reveal this "invisible labour" and so alongside your work we’re asking you to submit its "Social Invoice," which will be presented as a physical thermal receipt to visualize the hidden paper trail of creation. This invoice functions as the exhibition label for the work, not just displaying the title medium and price, but also itemising the "ghost hours" and systemic costs - such as passion exploitation, unpaid administrative time, or caregiving duties - that are traditionally erased by the gallery’s white walls. While we provide a framework for these "charges," the specific format of the invoice remains entirely up to the artist; they may choose to list precise financial costs, total hours sacrificed, or simply a descriptive ledger of the domestic and professional barriers they navigated. By pricing the "priceless" energy required to sustain a career in an unstable sector, this category transforms the act of exhibiting into a demand for radical transparency.

Each individual work submission will consist of:

A ready to display artwork
The social invoice for that work

Notes:

This is a commercial category, works can be submitted for sale or not for sale.
This category is for completed works in any media.
We recommend submitting a maximum of 2 works under this theme. You may submit additional works under another theme.
Your “social invoice” is a text only submission but other than this is not prescriptive and can include any information you want to attach to the labour involved in creating your work. You may wish to give items a time cost (e.g. The "Late Fee": Waiting 3 months for a previous client to pay me so I could buy materials - 90 Days of Stress) a monetary cost (e.g. The “Boomerang Fee”: Courier charges to return unsold work from another exhibition - £50.00) or something else entirely.

Sizes:

2D Single has a maximum dimension of 75cm in any direction (i.e. 1 of your 6 entries)
2D Double has a maximum dimension of 100cm in any direction (i.e. 2 of your 6 entries)
3D Single has a maximum dimension of 75cm in any direction
3D Double has a maximum dimension of 120cm in any direction

03. THE 13% THRESHOLD (Spatial Presence)

For those whose work demands significant physical or conceptual space, this category responds to the issue of stagnation around gallery representation figures, specifically that major gallery representation of women has held stubbornly at a low 13.7%.

We invite works that intentionally challenge this limit through their refusal to be squeezed, either in their scale or the power of their concepts.

We’ll be dedicating 13% of the gallery space to the display of works in this category.

Each individual work submission will consist of:

A ready to display artwork
A brief description of the works physical or metaphorical scale
Display instructions

Notes:

This is a commercial category, works can be submitted for sale or not for sale.
This category is for completed works in any media.
A maximum of 1 work can be submitted in this category. You may submit additional works under another theme.
Please provide detailed display instructions and consider emailing supporting images.
Due to the deliberate choice to limit the gallery space available for these works only a small number of works will be selected in this theme.

Sizes

There are no size limits on this submission but you should consider the scale of the venue when submitting your work.

04. UNFINISHED (The Archive of Stolen Time)

This category acknowledges that for many women, creative output is not a linear path, but a series of fragments of “stolen time” reclaimed from systemic pressures. In 2025, research showed that 72% of arts workers suffered from high stress and burnout, and many have reached a "crisis point" where they considered leaving the arts entirely due to financial strain or caring duties.

We want to move away from the idea that only "finished" work has value. This category is a monument to lost potential - honouring the work that remains unmade because life got in the way. By exhibiting these fragments, we create a collective testimony to the "stolen time" of artists who have had to prioritise survival over the studio. We are creating an archive of the "unfinished" to show exactly what the arts sector loses when its people aren't supported.

Each individual work submission will consist of:

An unfinished artwork
A timestamp for when the work was paused (this can be estimated but is ideally a full date)
Details of how the work is to be displayed

Notes:

Works can be displayed as “not for sale” or “sold as seen” or as “pre-order”
- “Sold as Seen” works are displayed for sale in the raw incomplete state
- “Pre-order” works are displayed as concepts for final pieces. Sales details provided should be for the final work, effectively taking payment in advance for the completed piece. Work displayed on this basis demonstrate commitment to produce the final work within a reasonable timeframe if commissioned.
This category is for incomplete works in any media.
We recommend submitting a maximum of 2 works under this theme. You may submit additional works under another theme.
You should provide detail of how your incomplete work is to be displayed and may be required to provide any special fixtures to facilitate this.

Sizes

2D Single has a maximum dimension of 75cm in any direction (i.e. 1 of your 6 entries)
2D Double has a maximum dimension of 100cm in any direction (i.e. 2 of your 6 entries)
3D Single has a maximum dimension of 75cm in any direction
3D Double has a maximum dimension of 120cm in any direction

THE BACKLOG PROJECT (Male Solidarity)

We invite male-identifying artists to support this year’s exhibition through the backlog project.

The Contribution: Male artists pay a submission fee and deliver a work.
The Reality: The work remains completely packaged and unopened on the gallery floor for the duration of the show removing its commercial potential.
The Impact: Proceeds from these fees will fund a Curation Fee for a woman artist, commissioned to arrange these "unseen" packages in the space as an installation.

Notes:

This is a non-commercial submission.
This is a symbolic contribution that enables participation, the male artist will receive no remuneration or recognition for their part in the show.
The installation as a whole will be recognised as the work of the commissioned woman artist.

Value For Every Artist

Whilst we can’t remove submission fees from our model at this time, we believe in ensuring value for artists who support us through their applications to work with us. To ensure our process builds visibility for all, every applicant - regardless of the final curation - will receive:

The AWO Commonplace Book (Optional Opt-In): Historically excluded from formal higher education and professional institutions, women utilised commonplace books as vital intellectual "workspaces" to construct authoritative identities and engage with culture from the domestic realm. These compilations allowed women to transcend traditional gender roles by merging household management with scientific observation, literary composition, and political critique, bridging the gap between private life and the public sphere.

As a nod to these texts, we’re creating “The AWO Commonplace Book”. You may optionally complete a professional profile and mini-interview to be included in this document, a digital resource to be shared with all applicants to help you discover and connect with your peers.
IWD Spotlights: Profiles from The Commonplace Book will be used for our International Women’s Day (IWD) campaign, featuring artist spotlights on our public channels throughout the exhibition. Submissions received before IWD will be used as part of our social campaign for this event.
IWD Networking Event: All artists who submit before International Women’s Day will receive an invitation to our IWD event.
The 2025 Industry Briefing: A curated report gathering some of the critical 2025 moments. This report will exclusively be available to applicants to AWO 2026.

Make A Submission

Submissions are now solely being taken through our internal platform or via our exhibition access support. You can make a submission at www.art-hub.co.uk/submissions

If you are not able to use this system for any reason, please email submissions@artizangallery.co.uk and we'll endeavour to support an alternative application method. Please remember we are a small team, and therefore access support requests should be made well in advance of the opportunity deadline to best enable us to assist.