Mxtape No.1 will be another carefully curated artist-led online group show brought to you once more by Cultivate. Once again most of the artists will be directly invited but the open call element and hearing from artists we don't know yet is important. The previous shows of 2022 all featured a number of artists from all over the land and the globe who responded to the open call, around 24 of the artists in January's show Deflect came via the call. We are very picky, our door is open though, new artistic blood is important.

Mxtape No.1 will be another carefully curated artist-led online group show brought to you once more by Cultivate. Once again most of the artists will be directly invited but the open call element and hearing from artists we don't know yet is important. The previous shows of 2022 all featured a number of artists from all over the land and the globe who responded to the open call, around 24 of the artists in January's show Deflect came via the call. We are very picky, our door is open though, new artistic blood is important. Mixtape No.1 will be the 25th online exhibition from Cultivate and we think, if we’ve counted it right, the 181st Cultivate artshow in all.

Please read all of this, we know how long it is but it will save us all time. You'd be amazed at how many people don't bother reading these things and just send us tedious photographs of red telephone boxes taken on their phone or pieces of digital/video art when we've said that's not what we want and then get all hissy pissy with us when we say no.

Mixtape No.1 will open online at 7pm on Tuesday October 4th hosted once again on the Organ magazine website at www.organthing.com.  We will once again be personally inviting the majority of the artists, but as always the flow of artistic new blood is very important. There is an open call aspect, and we would like to have at least a dozen artists we don’t actually know yet, we also welcome those who have shown with us before to submit again.

Please do check out one of the recent previous online shows here on the Organ website to get a flavour of what we do and what we're looking for, one of the most recent online show with an open call element was the Still show, or go check out the Alright? show or January's Deflect show or the most recent show Burst.

Theme? There is no theme this time, we just want exciting engaging art that works in terms of an on-line group show.

Once again, as with the previous online shows, we are looking for exciting painters, installation artists, 3D artists, in fact Mixtape No.1 is open to artists of all disciplines besides photography or digital/video art (nothing against either discipline and there are plenty of online outlets for both, this online show is not really about digital art or photography although we might invite a photographer or two we have worked with before). The one thing we really don't want is a flat lifeless image of a painting, have a look at one of the last shows, go grab a flavour and a feel, make your image feel like a piece of art hanging on a gallery wall.

We had a lot of what you might call polite illustration last time, please do check out some of the recent online shows such as Alright? or Recultivate, polite illustration is not really what we're about. And and and, this is important, the images do have to work in terms of an on-line exhibition, badly taken shots of an instillation or your painting will not work for us however good the actual art is. 

If you wish to be considered for Mixtape No.1 then simply submit no more than five images  with titles and a link to your artist website. The minimum requirement for this online show is that you have a working, well maintained up-to-date artist website that we can link to so people can find out more about you – a working website mind you, not just a Facebook page or an instagram account that full of photos from your last birthday party or what your cat had for dinner today or heaven forbid one of those dreadful Saatchi pages, (an Instagram page that is mostly focused on your art or a Facebook Artist page is more than fine).

The call is open to anyone from anywhere on the planet. There are no fees or costs involved, we’re not paying anything in terms of gallery rents and such for this one so why would we even dream of charging our fellow artists just to open an email and host something on our website? Some galleries or curators or indeed some of our fellow artists might think the practice of charging a fee is okay and exploiting artists like that is fine but we detest the practice. 

Sure, there’s a fair bit of our time involved but hey, we really really (really) don’t like galleries who charge for just opening an email and then claim it to be admin costs, why should anyone ever pay to submit to a show they’re might not even get to take part in?  All we ask from you, and this is an important bit, is that if you are selected or invited that you put up links and proactively share details on your own websites and properly on your social media feeds, a little more than just a waste of time 24 hour "story" in Instagram. We expect you to post news and links properly (frankly if you don’t share the link and carry the news on your art pages then you won’t be asked back, I think that’s fair, we will check and if you didn't bother last time then why should we ask you back when you submit again this time?)

If you wish to submit to Mixtape No.1 then please do. Once you do we promise to get back as soon as we can, usually within four or five working days (probably faster) with a yes or no, if it is a yes we’ll come back and ask for all the details we need) if it is a no then we will try and take the time to tell you why - as artists ourselves there's nothing we hate more than a rude cut 'n paste cold-hearted rejection.

Deadline is end of day Sunday 25th September. Don’t be leaving it until the last minute though, you have more chance if you don’t leave it to the very last minute and the rush from everyone else. We have put this call up a good few weeks ahead of the deadline, hopefully that gives you plenty of time to react.

Once again the show is being curated by the Cultivate team of Sean Worrall and Emma Harvey. We are first and foremost working artists. We opened Cultivate because we really didn’t like the often very cynical way most galleries were treating us artists, we like to be treated the way you as artists expect to be treated. Cultivate is an artist-led thing, please leave any art school attitudes outside the front door.

We are very much about letting people in but we are very very picky, if we say no, we will politely tell you why rather than just send you a standard rejection. If we say no, it is mostly a reflection of our personal tastes – first, above all else, we need to feel what you do is right for this group show and that being part of the show is right for both you and us, some art really works in an online context, some art simply doesn't…

One more thing, we have noticed some people have a habit of submitting the same art as the art we rejected last time, please don’t.  There's one guy who submits the same painting to every call we ever put up here, we keep telling him why we're saying no, we'll probably just hit the decline button for him this time, there are only so many hours in the day. Do please look at the previous shows, it will save us all lots of time.

Thanks for reading all this, we look forward to hearing from you. sorry if some of it sounds heavy handed, we're just trying to explain things...

Deadline for Submssions for Mixtape no.1 is end of day Sunday 25th September. There is no theme but do explore Deflect, it will be like Deflect, do ask questions if in doubt.