London Open Live

4 Jun-7 Sep 2025

Overview

The London Open – Whitechapel Gallery’s open call exhibition – is back with a live art focus for its 2025 edition: London Open Live.

Originally established in 1932 as an open call exhibition to showcase local artists and the creative energy of the East End, The London Open has evolved over the years to encompass the whole city as a hub of global artistic activity and offer a potent snapshot of prescient themes and issues. It has provided an important launch pad for a great range of artists including Larry Achiampong, Frank Bowling, Alice Channer, Anish Kapoor, Heather Phillipson, Paula Rego, Veronica Ryan, and Bob and Roberta Smith.

For 2025, the Open’s focus will be on performance and live art. The live art scene was badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, not least due to the cancellation of live events and programmes during the various lockdowns.  This inevitably resulted in decreased visibility as well as lack of investment and support. London Open Live aims to create new opportunities for artists working across live art practices, while showcasing the importance of collective activity, of coming together and fostering intimacy through a dynamic programme of new and recent live art.

A panel comprising artists and experts in the field, alongside Whitechapel Gallery curatorial staff, will select a range of work and approaches that represent and explores live art practices in London and collectively reflects on ideas and possibilities of ‘openness’ and ‘liveness’ today.

The London Open Live programme will feature work by established and emerging artists who work across definitions of ‘live art’, and builds on Whitechapel Gallery’s long history of commissioning and staging performance and live art. Performances will take place Thursdays to Sundays throughout Summer 2025 and will be accompanied by a film and talks programme looking at contemporary performance and live art practice.

The application process for London Open Live is being managed by Artquest – a public programme of University of the Arts London (UAL) – to ensure that that the open call offers a range of accessible options for applicants and is informed by Artquest’s extensive research into open call procedures across the arts sector.