Bow Open: Connections

Three guest curators for 30 years

The Bow Open is Bow Arts’ annual showcase of astonishing artwork created exclusively by our Studio Holders, Affordable Housing residents and Artist Educators. Each year, a different guest curator is invited to select the work. 

2025 marks Bow Arts’ 30th anniversary so we are celebrating with a Bow Open that is bigger and better than ever. We are excited to welcome not one but THREE artists to curate the show.  

Each artist has been a studio holder at some point in our 30-year history.  They epitomise the excellence of the work created in our spaces and communities, and bring deep insight and commitment to the selection process. Who better to capture and represent the ethos of the Bow Arts Trust than the very creatives that have been with us every step of the way.  

Bobby Baker’s acclaimed intersectional feminist practice includes performance, drawing, and installation, and persistently exposes the undervalued and stigmatised aspects of women’s daily lives, exemplified by pioneering works such as Drawing on a Mother’s Experience (1988) and Kitchen Show (1991). Bobby is currently installing An Edible Family in a Mobile Home at the Whitworth Gallery, having remade it in 2023 as part of Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 at Tate Britain. Bobby originally had a studio in Bow Road and the area, including our beloved Tower Hamlets Cemetry Park, was a testing ground for her Roving Diagnostic Unit (2015). 

Albert Potrony’s participatory practice examines ideas of identity, community and language. Albert is interested in generating social spaces through his projects, and participation from diverse groups and individuals is a key element of his work. Recent projects include equal play (2021-2022), a play installation, reading space and participatory project looking at equality and care through the lens of childcare and men’s roles in it and The Achilles Heel Project, researching anti sexist men’s groups of the 70s and 80s, who were striving for a new type of masculinity that would embrace and support Feminism. For the past five years Albert has been developing MORTALS, a participatory art and research project that seeks to address our own mortality; exploring ageing, care, loss, grief and death with diverse groups and collectives. Albert was with Bow Arts from the very start, helping to establish our first home on Bow Road. He worked as one of our Artist Educators, bringing participatory projects to schools and communities in east London. 

​​​Nye Thompson is an artist turned software designer turned artist. Her work spans image-making, video and sculptural installation, filmmaking, experimental software architectures and process-based performance. Nye made the world’s first ​​horror film for machines and​ has​ exchanged postcards with orbiting satellites. In 2021 she received the Lumen Prize Gold Award with UBERMORGEN for their AI film UNINVITED. Nye currently works from her studio in Bow Road and was lead artist for Visions Bow Arts’ renowned biennial exhibition of moving image, digital and performance art in 2020. 

Considering the expertise of our three alumni and Bow Arts’ commitment to bringing art and communities together, we are excited to reveal that this year’s theme will be CONNECTIONS. In our 30th anniversary year we are celebrating and reaffirming our role in discovering new talent, fostering careers and supporting new audiences to the arts. Connections provides both a celebration of what has been achieved and a call to continue reaching out. 

Bow Arts Artists can respond to the theme however they like and submit up to three works of any media. Entry is free. The deadline is Monday 31 March 2025, 12 noon, and the exhibition will take place Friday 6 June to Sunday 31 August 2025. 

We are open to all media, as well as event proposals for the exhibition’s event programme.   

Bow Arts Artists can submit applications here.

Please fill out an equal opportunities form too.