UK Painting Exhibitions and Degree Shows

A gallery wall goes up before an opening, the paint on the skirting still tacky when the first guests arrive. That is where painting in the United Kingdom shows itself: exhibitions, private views, degree shows and life drawing sessions, each one posted by the person running it and gathered here under British Artists. Group shows sit alongside solo hangs, and a private view is the night the work is unveiled rather than simply displayed.

The painting calendar in the United Kingdom turns on a handful of fixed points. A painter spends months making work in private, and a show is where that work meets a room, and the year's fixtures cluster around that. Frieze London lands in October and pulls galleries and collectors into concentrated looking. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition runs the opposite way: an open submission show. The Turner Prize exhibition adds its own following, degree shows open in June, and open-studio weekends run by studio providers widen that same door further.

Turning up to a painting exhibition asks little of a visitor beyond curiosity. A private view is the one night the painter is reliably present, there to talk about a canvas while it is still fresh from the hang. The run that follows is quieter and better for looking, without the noise of an opening night. Some shows charge for entry and some do not, and where there is a ticket it is sold wherever the organiser chooses to sell it, never here.

Posting an occasion here needs no gallery affiliation and no professional title, and any registered member running a painting exhibition, a private view or a life drawing session can list it under their own name, because the artist role is never required to put one on. A visitor can narrow by discipline or by style. From here the same painters turn up among the artists, their finished work sits in the works section, and British Artists' painting classes wait for anyone wanting to learn the craft.