Calling all art students! Contribute to the global art community with COP_ART26! Win the first ever Golden Monkey Award and £250 prize money!

The Art of Rapid Transition is part of our work – realising the powerful role played by art and culture in bringing possible futures alive, we collaborate with artists of all kinds to promote creative responses to climate change. As the world prepares for the COP26 in Glasgow, we are calling on new voices, new contributions by means of an open submission online exhibition. The winner will be awarded the first ever Golden Monkey Award!

We are asking art students and recent graduates to submit documentation of work for COP_ART26, an online exhibition timed to coincide with COP26 – 31st October – 12th November 2021. New and existing work is invited – all methodologies and media are welcome.

COP_ART26 is concerned with the diverse range of issues around climate change, including (not limited to) social justice; food security; migration; economics; technology; value; travel; stuff; materiality; aesthetics; time; rapid transition; adaptability; slippage; abstraction; mental health; the future… 

The exhibition will take place online and on social media in order to reach as many people as possible in the short time available. Selected posts will be uploaded to Instagram and other platforms on a daily basis over the two week period of the conference. Live-digital responses will also be invited during the conference. After the conference, the exhibition will be available on Instagram @COP_ART26.

TO SUBMIT: 

EMAIL: up to three jpeg images of a single artwork / installation / performance / etc, 1080px x 1080px, or a single MP4 file, 3 seconds to 1 minute long; and the following details:

Your name, artwork title (or Untitled…), medium/s; dimensions (e.g. cm / seconds / dimensions variable), date (year only); any other text you’d like included (please note this may be edited). 

Also, if you have one, your Instagram account handle (not mandatory).

TO: 26copart@gmail.com

EMAIL SUBJECT: COP_ART26

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 25th OCTOBER 2021

THE ‘GOLDEN MONKEY’ AWARD + £250 prize money will be announced on the last day of the Conference – Friday 12th November. Payment of prize money will be via bank transfer. 

Contextualising Notes: 

Three years ago the UN declared that we have only 12 years to have a reasonable chance of avoiding the 1.5℃ increase in temperatures considered to be a vital defence against even worse climate breakdown and more extreme weather events across the globe. Some progress has been made, but unfortunately nothing like what’s required for future health, well-being and longer-term survival. Meanwhile governments continue to support fossil fuels, and to confuse rhetoric with action: COP_ART, not COP_OUT.

The Golden Monkey is an endangered species that relatively little is known about.

Project supported by collaborating artist Judith Dean, Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts, UWE, Bristol.