Taking place between 30 January - 2 May 2027, our Biennial Open Exhibition: Paint will showcase the expressive possibilities of paint as an artistic medium and subject. This is an opportunity to present fresh and compelling approaches to the theme in all its forms, from innovative contemporary explorations to more traditional approaches to painting.  

This year’s theme is inspired by the RWA's major exhibition of recent works by Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA RWA (Hon). Bowling is an honorary Academician of the RWA whose seven-decade career has been driven by his passion for painting and by the physical and sensory effects of working with paint and colour.  

Selection is overseen by a panel of guest experts alongside RWA Academicians. This year, we are delighted to welcome: Martyn Cross, Painter and Visual Artist and Dea Vanagan, Senior Director of Hauser & Wirth Somerset. Representing the Academy are Angela Lizon VPRWA (Vice President), and Academicians Adelaide Damoah RWA FRSA, Stephen Jacobson RWA and Lisa Wright RWA. 

You can learn more about the panel below. 

In the RWA Biennial Open Call, we invite entrants to consider paint not only as a traditional medium, but also as a process, visual language and subject in its own right. We welcome ambitious and imaginative responses across painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, film, textiles, installation, and other disciplines.  

We encourage submissions that expand, disrupt or reimagine conventional ideas of painting, offering a platform for work that is bold, thoughtful, experimental and original.  

Submissions for the Biennial Open Call run from Monday 7 September to Monday 9 November 2026. 

 Click here to find out more and apply to the open call. 

The selectors (pictured left to right):

Dea Vanagan is Senior Director of Hauser & Wirth Somerset, a world-class gallery and multi-purpose arts centre, providing a unique destination for experiencing art, architecture, and the rural landscape of Somerset. She works closely with the team in Somerset to develop the programme, exhibitions, residencies for artists and curators, events, sales and operations, as well as expanding national and international networks. Dea was the Founding Artistic Director of the Bomb Factory Art Foundation, where she is now a Trustee. She is a trustee of Spike Island, a member of AWITA and an alumna of the Clore Leadership Programme.  

Lisa Wright RWA is an award-winning British artist based in Cornwall, working across  painting, drawing and sculpture. For more than thirty years the figure—particularly that of the child—has been central to her distinctive practice, exploring childhood and adolescence through themes of identity, transition and memory. Combining assured draughtsmanship with an expressive, painterly use of colour, her work draws on lived experience and subtle references to art history.  Wright has exhibited widely and received numerous awards, most recently the 2026 AXA Art Prize at the Royal Academy of Arts. Her public commission Future Forest (2019) was created to mark the centenary of Forestry Commission England.   

Martyn Cross is an artist and painter living and working in Bristol, UK. He is represented by Hales Gallery, London, and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. His work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions both nationally and internationally, and he is a visiting lecturer at the Apollo Painting School, Bath Spa University, and UWE, amongst others. In 2025 he curated the group exhibition  Softly Radiant, Half Buried at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, and he attended the Roberts Institute of Art’s residency programme in Angus, Scotland.  

Adelaide Damoah RWA FRSA is a British-Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist working across performance, painting, cyanotype, film and AI. Her practice examines embodiment, ancestry, memory, ecology and the politics of the Black female body. She has exhibited internationally, including at Gagosian London, Haus Kunst Mitte Berlin, the Columbus Museum of Art and in Venice during the 60th Venice Biennale. Her work is held in the UK Government Art Collection, Fondation H and the RWA Collection. An RWA Academician and trustee of ING Discerning Eye, Damoah is currently developing Arachne, an evolving film and performance series exploring entanglements between human, plant, spider and artificial intelligence.  

Stephen Jacobson RWA was born in Manchester and studied at the Manchester High School of Art, Manchester College of Art and Liverpool College of Art. In 1971, he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy School post-graduate course. After graduating, he taught etching at Camden Institute before moving to Bristol in 1975. Jacobson worked in design for several years while continuing to paint and exhibit locally and in London. In 1988, he moved to Portishead and this led to a fascination with the sea and the skies. In 2008, he was elected to the Royal West of England Academy and became Vice President in 2013. In 2017, he curated an exhibition at the RWA on the theme of ‘Air’ and in the same year was invited to become a member of the Bath Society of Artists. 

Originally from London, Angela Lizon VPRWA currently lives and works in Bristol. She studied oil painting at Bristol Polytechnic and then won a postgraduate scholarship for study at Krakow Academy of Fine Art in Poland. Lizon was elected an academician at the RWA in 2018 and is currently the Vice President. Exhibiting regularly, Lizon has been selected for the Contemporary British Painting Prize, twice for the prestigious John Moore's Painting Prize, and was this year’s winner of the Jackson's Art Prize. Of her work Angela says "The language of 17th century Dutch art with its readymade gravitas - mortality, fragility, ostentation - is at the core of my practice. I combine it with kitsch objects, fairies and animated vegetables, investigating the tension between high and low art. The outwardly crafted and painterly focus of my paintings is a seductive ploy to slow down access to the embedded, sometimes absurd narrative within. My cultural heritage is reflected in the paintings, a blend of Polish exotica and Cockney humour, which influences the work both atmospherically, emotively and aesthetically.