New Year, New Directions: A Reflection on 2021.
Happy New Year Lemons!
To start off the year, I just want to take a moment to reflect on our 2021 and tell you all about what to expect from Round Lemon in the year ahead. We are so proud of how far we’ve grown and developed as an organisation this year, and want to say a HUGE thank you to every artist, writer and organisation we’ve worked through 2021.
We couldn’t have done it without you all.
🍋
January 2021
Our Online exhibition ‘Body’ was in full swing during the 2021 New Year, with a selection of 39 incredible international artists featured.
Our Guest writers wrote some captivating articles to accompany the exhibition theme, please do read them if you didn't get the chance to last year!
February 2021
Artists Mia Osbourne and Irene Kattou from the exhibition were interviewed by Carmela Vienna and Guest Writer Alexander Clarke.
We also announced our first CASH PRIZE open call for the First ever Round Lemon Award. The theme was centred around what you’d classify as your ‘ONE’ best work, and we had lots of amazing submissions to look through.
March 2021
We announced the Winner for our ‘ONE’ exhibition: Sculptor Fiona Campbell. She showed such intuitive, visual and professional skill through all elements of her practice and her work ‘Glut’ took our breath away. Runner up Artist was Chantelle May Boyle, whos installation performance proved imaginative and experimental which we were also so impressed by.
We also launched our first Online Open mic event via Zoom, which was a popular hit with comedians, spoken word artists, singers and more.
April 2021
Our next online exhibition April Fish Launched on April fools Day. The theme centred around satire and humour in art, and saw the work of 14 Artists exhibited.
We launched our First Spring Artist Talk series, which saw all four Round Lemon co-founders talk about their practice via Zoom. All of these are available to watch on our YouTube channel - so browse to your hearts content.
May 2021
Us co-founders were very excited to feature in the Ikon Gallery ‘Ikon for Artists: Art Sale’. As we began branching out in the IRL Art world, we were so happy to see the works of artists we’d worked with featured too, such as Mia Osbourne’s painting ‘In Flux’.
Our Artist talk series continued, with talks by Round Lemon Award winner Fiona Campbell, poet Arun Jeetoo, and Queer Artist William Shoal.
June 2021
Our Online Exhibition ‘WORM’ launched, featuring different types of digital art.
Meanwhile Zest was still churning out amazing reading content surrounding varying topics.
July 2021
We launched our first ‘ZEST’ awards shortly after the blog’s one year anniversary to celebrate the amazing Guest Writers who have contributed to Round Lemon’s reading space.
We also hosted a curators review for our WORM exhibition on instagram live, with each co-founder discussing and analysing the 19 works in the exhibition.
August 2021 & September 2021
Zest continued to flourish as us co-founders began to work on some secret and very exciting opportunities throughout the Autumn and winter months.
We also hosted our first IRL community engagement workshop at Moseley hive on the topic of ‘Reimagining the high street’.
October 2021
October was our busiest month of Round Lemon, kicking off with taking part in Fierce Festival’s ‘Artists behind bars’ - an event by Kitty Finer. Us four Saints of the yellow sacrificed over 100 lemons to create Lemon Martinis, and we had so much fun.
We then had our four day takeover at Moseley Hive, where we hosted an Art Market, Open Mic Night, Kitchen Gallery Exhibition, and ate lots of cake. Lots of Freshest Lemons were made too which was a bonus!
November 2021
November saw the launch of our part in SHOUT Festival - launching three digital workshops on the body as material, queering the museum and homemade sex toys. We also had fun at the launch party where we met some lovely artists and got papped.
We also launched our second IRL exhibition SQUASH at Parkside Gallery. The exhibition showcases the works of the four Round Lemon co-founders, as well as a video showcase of amazing video artists. The exhibition has been extended until mid-January so there’s still time to catch it if you haven’t already.
December 2021
Our last events of the year were the IRL Eastside Winter Art fair, as well as Bishop Challoner’s Winter Showcase Market at the Kingsway. Some beautiful Mr Blobby Baubles and Cat Christmas cards flew off the shelves!
It was a bittersweet end to the year as one of us co-founders - Ryan Asbury - decided to step down and leave the collective. Being such a huge part of Round Lemon, the collective wouldn’t have got this far without his outstanding work ethic and contribution. We respect his decision and wish him the best of luck moving forward with his practice.
Plans for 2022…
Whilst we’re still navigating within this ‘transition’ phase of bridging a team of four down to three, we are injecting our resources back into Round Lemon’s digital presence for the first couple of months of the year. The latter-end of 2021 was so IRL-event focused, that we want our digital space to have the TLC it rightfully deserves - especially because it’s how us amazing international artists connect.
You already may have noticed that ZEST has had a revamp - now with it’s own curated category page, archive and NEW writers database. The writers database is pretty much what our former associates page was like - but it’s exclusively for writers who have contributed to Zest. So expect a few more changes to the site during the coming weeks.
Our SQUASH exhibition is on until the end of January - both online and in person. So if you haven’t checked that out already then please browse to your hearts content! Our open call in partnership with SHOUT Festival is still open - we really encourage you all to apply. Please note that WE DO ACCEPT EXISTING WORK - as long as it is related to the themes we outline in the brief.
We can confirm that we do have something really exciting in the pipeline for this year - potentially one of our biggest projects yet. Whilst we can’t reveal what this is at the moment, do stay tuned for when we announce it within the next couple of months.
Thank you again for all of your support this year - whether you’re contributors, donors, or readers. We do this all for you so thank you for being such an integral part of our 2021.
Here’s to an even more Lemony 2022 🥂
The limitations of the body are non-existent in art, and each artist finds their own unique way of engaging in this subject-matter. Women have taken back control of how the female body is perceived.