About
Beep Painting Biennial 2024: I won’t stay in a world without love
Preview: Saturday 9th November 6pm – late
Continues until Saturday 21st December
Open Weds – Sat 11am -7pm
Artists and visitors from all over the world will converge on Swansea this Winter for the elysium gallery-led Beep Painting Biennial 2024.
Beep originally started life in 2012 and was conceived by artist and elysium gallery director Jonathan Powell. It was borne out of a desire to bring a regular series of ambitious contemporary painting exhibitions to Wales embracing the best and most vital work being created today.
It aims to bring to Wales the best contemporary painting from across the globe, highlighting excellence in content, aesthetic, technique, and materials used. Beep also provides and nurtures an informative network for painters and people interested in contemporary painting by raising awareness of artists’ works and artist opportunities from across the UK and beyond.
The Beep Painting Prize 2024 exhibition features over 440 artists from around the world. All were asked to respond to the theme of ‘I won’t stay in a world without love’, a lyric taken from a discarded Beatles song. This year there was a change to the application process designed to shake things up, include more artists and make the process easier for overseas artists in light of some of the obstacles caused by Brexit.
As usual artists were able to submit up to two paintings based loosely on this year’s musical theme. Out of all the applications, a long list was drawn up of over 300 artists who were then given the title of a song from a rescued 7” vinyl record and create a new painted cover for it. The painted record covers each measuring 18cm x 18cm, and the music will form the main content of the exhibition.
Our panel of judges then selected a shortlist of their top 40 artists from the original applications which will be displayed in the exhibition, from which the winner of the 2024 Beep Painting Biennial will be chosen.
The shortlisted artists were selected by a panel of judges featuring celebrated musician and Radio Wales host Bronwen Lewis, curator Ann Jones, artist and lecturer Nelson Diplexcito, with award winning Welsh artist Tim Davies selecting work for the Friends of the Glynn Vivian Prize.
The winner, announced on the opening night of the show on Saturday November 9th, will receive £1,500 and a solo exhibition with elysium gallery. The Friends of the Glynn Vivian winner will also receive a monetary award and a show with elysium gallery at a later date.
This year also sees the introduction of the Beep ChildrensPainting Biennial which will open across the road from elysium gallery at Volcano Theatre on Saturday 9th November.