The Gate Art centre, just off city road is one of the true cultural assets of Cardiff.
As well as being a performances space for plays and theatrical productions, it also holds classes and writings groups for the community and has a very fine social bar space.
It also has a fantastic exhibition space. Which Made in Roath was privileged to use for the 2017 festival for the Open Call. The Open Call is always a popular aspect of the festival and one which always see’s a fantastic response. The Open call is free to enter art call out and gets your work displayed on the wall of the exhibition space, which this year was the Gate.
I always like the Open call mainly because you never quite know what your going to see. Landscape paintings are next to self portraits, with abstract art next to minimalist drawings. Its a real collective mix of work from artists at every stage of their careers and skill.
It’s not often as an artist you get a chance like the open call to just enter some work and see what happens. All for free too.
Its also a great thing to be apart of something with so many other artists, to meet them and see their work. One of the nicest things is to see what everyone is up too, what everyone is making. Its a place to get ideas and to be inspired.
In the days of the great art colleges they would display work in much the same way. Holding vast collective exhibitions of students work, the idea being they could see and understand what other students were doing and by doing so get inspired to create and fuel their own work.
Thats probably the best reason to visit the Open Call, just to see what everyone else is doing. I look forward to seeing its return in 2018.