About the Project

Do You Have an Artistic Gut? is an international art competition intended for secondary school and grammar school students who want to deepen their interest in art. The competition is a showcase of student projects based on themes from contemporary art and society.

The project was created in the Czech Republic as an independent educational platform based on cooperation with gallery institutions. During the year, registered teams always work on a different current theme and then present their projects at a selected institution. The works are evaluated by a jury composed of artists, art theorists, and gallery educators. In 2015, other foreign institutions joined, including the Slovak National Gallery, which lost its license in January 2025. Since summer 2025, the project has been running under the auspices of the civic association Kultúrne Koncepty.

The most important public and private galleries from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary take part in organizing the competition.

For whom?

The competition is intended for students aged 14 to 19 (age exceptions are permissible). Previous experience in the field of art is not required. The competition invites students to actively explore artistic approaches and their significance for everyday life. The task of the participants is to create a creative group (min. 2 people, max. 6 people) and develop an art project according to the current theme of the year. In this project, it is possible to make use of the various areas of interest of individual team members, involve their surroundings, etc. The project can also be incorporated into the educational plans of humanities subjects and used at school to implement the objectives of cross-curricular themes.

Why?

The aim of the project is to offer students the opportunity to apply their creative abilities and interests in the context of the environment in which they live, an opportunity to share their opinions and discuss them, to work on a longer-term project that will touch on their everyday functioning and reveal new impulses for them. The aim is also to present contemporary art as a partner in discovering new connections and thinking about people and the world.

When?

The competition takes place from September to May, with binding registration ending on 20 December of the current year.

September – December: announcement of the new theme for the next year of the competition, sending information to schools

October – February: consultations on the works of registered teams

February: semifinals – selection of the 25 most interesting projects; if fewer than 25 groups are registered, consultations on the registered projects take place

May: opening of the exhibition of the most interesting projects, finals

June: meeting of the winning teams of the Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian competitions and a joint exhibition of works in one of the organizing galleries

How to do it?

We recommend incorporating participation in the competition into thematic plans and using it as an implementation of cross-curricular topics. For each year, a theme is selected which, in addition to allowing for a wide range of artistic solutions, also offers many interdisciplinary connections with areas beyond visual art. Our aim is to draw attention to the position of art as an important phenomenon closely connected with everyday life as well as history. The resulting projects must be based on the assigned theme. Their treatment, the choice of artistic approach or medium is entirely up to the contestants. They may use traditional techniques (e.g. painting, sculpture, printmaking), as well as new media (video, photography, computer animation, the use of social networks, etc.). In the overall evaluation, the jury is guided by the quality of the work itself, fulfilment of the assignment, and the process the team has gone through.

History of the competition

The competition was established in 2009 in the Czech Republic. Over the following years, important institutions from other countries also became involved in organizing it. In the Czech Republic, it has stable support from the National Gallery Prague, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, the Rudolfinum Gallery and the Moravian Gallery in Brno. The competition is also connected with the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, the country’s most important award for young artists. In Slovakia, the competition was organized by the Slovak National Gallery from 2016 until January 2025, when it lost the licence. Since the summer of 2025, the competition has been organized by the civic association Kultúrne Koncepty together with partner institutions, the Central Slovak Gallery in Banská Bystrica, the East Slovak Gallery in Košice and the Bratislava City Gallery. In Hungary, the competition is under the patronage of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest and the Deák17 Gallery.

Depending on the theme of the year, we cooperate with various organizations with which we prepare accompanying events, involve them in the jury, invite them to the opening, or co-create Črevo gifts. For the Butterfly effect theme, we were supported with in-kind gifts by the SPP Foundation; for the Food theme, we collaborated with the civic association Free Food and the package-free shop Bezobalis; for the Network theme, we began more intensive cooperation with the company Europapier, and the company Merch you helped us with merchandise, and for the Share theme we worked with the organization IPčko. A long-term partner of the platform is the law firm Taylor Wessing. For the Sound x Silence theme, we established cooperation with the State Philharmonic Košice and the theatre Na Peróne.

In each year, the Črevo team also includes a jury chair from the art environment. The jury has included Jaro Kyša, Jozef Tušan, Ivana Šáteková, Braňo Matis, Jana Kapelová, Dávid Koronczi, Radovan Dranga, Katarína Poliačiková and Erik Sikora.

Every year, the competition proves growing interest from schools, students, and gallery institutions alike. Several dozen schools have taken part in previous years, and the participating teams have presented hundreds of projects and realized works.

Each year, the organizers of the competition approach the vast majority of secondary schools and grammar schools (for example, 111 teams registered for the first year in Slovakia, i.e. more than 500 students.) During the school year, the participating teams work on their projects, which they then present at the competition semifinal. The final takes place each year in a different partner gallery and is connected with an exhibition of the most interesting works. In 2023, for the first time, we also prepared the exhibition opening before the final itself, so that we could celebrate our year-long efforts on both sides. During the final, the teams present their final projects before an expert jury, which selects the best project. The winning team receives the traveling Umelecké črevo award, designed by jeweller Katarína Defeo Fiúza Siposová. Registration and evaluation of projects take place separately in each country, but they are connected by a common assignment. The winning teams subsequently meet at an international gathering in one of the organizing galleries and prepare an exhibition together.