Set up to showcase local talent and provide selling opportunities for artists, Coventry Open celebrates the quality and diversity of art being produced in Coventry and the wider West Midlands region. Our 2023 exhibition will be the twelfth Coventry Open, and the first to include a young people's showcase, giving artists aged 15-18 a chance to exhibit their work in a professional gallery setting.

Visual artists working in any medium were invited to submit images and supporting information about their work via an online submissions portal in early January. A £1000 prize was awarded to one winning entry chosen by the independent judging panel alongside an additional prize for the Young People's showcase winner.

For the 12th edition of the annual exhibition, organisers scrapped entry fees and included a young people’s showcase for the first time, giving more artists a chance to exhibit their work in a professional gallery setting. More than 1,000 submissions were made across a variety of media in January, with 248 shortlisted by a panel of independent judges and the best 108 were on display from Thursday March 23 2023 until Sunday, May 21 2023.

The exhibition, curated by Alice Swatton, hopes to showcase the best artworks created by people living in and around Coventry and allow artists to sell their work, with an additional People’s Choice prize to be determined by visitors to the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum via a public voting system.

Mohsen, who is a professor at Birmingham City University and is to receive a £1,000 prize, said: “As artists, we are always working behind the scenes and never really thinking about where our work will end up or who will see it. But to have an event and a project like this bringing together so many other artists with such a high quality of work from is incredible.

“It is an unbelievable honour to be selected by the judges. A lot of time spent alone goes into my work, but I am responding to so much going on in the world and from my past, thinking about others, and I hope that visitors can feel a sense of that in the work.”