An artist CV is a factual record of a practice, not a persuasive document. It is read quickly, often alongside a hundred others, and its job is to let someone establish context in twenty seconds. That makes conventional structure more valuable than originality.
The sections, in the usual order
- Name and contact. Email and website. Postal address only where a call requires it.
- Education. Degrees with institution and year. Omit the section entirely if it is not relevant to your route.
- Solo exhibitions. Year, title, venue, city.
- Group exhibitions. The same, and where a show was juried or curated by someone recognisable, saying so is worth a few words.
- Awards, grants and prizes. Year, award, awarding body.
- Residencies. Year, programme, location.
- Collections. Public and corporate collections holding work. Private collections only where named and with permission.
- Publications and press. Author, title, publication, date.
- Teaching, talks and juries. Where relevant to the application.
Reverse chronological within each section. Consistent punctuation throughout. No design that interferes with scanning.
What does not belong
Unrelated employment, unless a call asks for full work history. Skills lists. Social media follower counts. Group shows you organised yourself, presented as though selected. Exhibitions that have not happened yet, unless clearly marked forthcoming. Anything you would not want asked about.
The most damaging inclusion is the ambiguous one — a paid group show listed exactly like a juried one. Readers who recognise the venue will draw their own conclusion, and it will be worse than the truth.
Early-career CVs
A short CV is not a problem. Every artist has had one, and readers assessing early-career applications expect it — many funders assess the work and the plan almost entirely on their own merits at that stage.
Delete the empty sections rather than leaving headings with nothing under them. Include what is real: degree shows, local group exhibitions, self-organised projects labelled as such, workshops completed, and any award however small. The alternative — inflation — is detectable and expensive.
Make each CV entry self-explanatory
A CV entry should identify what happened without making the reader reconstruct it. A title and a year are not enough when a venue, city or role is needed to distinguish one activity from another.
| Section | Example structure | Clarification when needed |
|---|---|---|
| Solo exhibition | 2026 — Tidal Notes, Example Gallery, Leeds | Mark a confirmed future show as forthcoming |
| Group exhibition | 2025 — Surface Studies, Example Arts Centre, Bristol | Identify juried, curated, online or self-organised context |
| Commission | 2024 — Wall relief, Example Library, York | State your role in a team project |
| Training | 2023 — Printmaking workshop, Example Studio | Describe a workshop as a workshop, not a degree |
Choose a punctuation pattern and use it throughout. Put dates in a consistent position and list the newest activity first within each section. Keep hyperlinks usable but do not make a reader follow them to discover the basic facts.
Maintain a master record and a submission version
A master CV is an archive; an application CV is a selection from that archive. The master can hold complete publication details, project budgets, collaborators and evidence links. The submitted version should follow the call's limits and put the relevant activity where the reader expects it.
For a public-art qualification call, completed commissions, scale, project roles and delivery experience may belong before exhibitions. For a research residency, relevant projects and methods may need more prominence. Tailoring means choosing and ordering evidence, not changing what happened.
Check public and private versions separately. A public CV rarely needs a home address, date of birth or personal identifiers. An application form may legitimately ask for eligibility evidence elsewhere; do not put sensitive details in a reusable PDF unless required.
Export the requested format and open it again. Check line breaks, page count, readable text, active links and the filename. Ensure that the CV and form give the same dates and names. A final one-page PDF with small but legible type is preferable to a visually elaborate file whose entries cannot be scanned; follow the organiser's accessibility or formatting requirements where provided.
How should you handle a gap?
Leave it. A CV is a list, not a narrative, and nobody is owed an account of the years between two entries. Where a gap is genuinely relevant to an application — a break for caring, illness or other work — a sentence in the covering document is the place for it, not the CV.
Should you tailor a CV to each application?
Lightly. Reorder sections so the most relevant is highest, and trim entries that carry nothing for this reader. Do not remove things to appear more emerging than you are; eligibility is checked against what you state.
What about online exhibitions?
List them, labelled as online. They are a real part of practice now and readers understand them. Presenting one as a physical show is the kind of ambiguity that costs more than it gains.
Do you need a separate biography?
Usually yes, and it is a different document: a short third-person paragraph rather than a list. Where a call asks for both, they should not repeat each other — see the artist statement for how the three documents divide the work.
Which format should you send?
PDF, named with your surname, unless the call specifies otherwise. Word documents reflow differently on every machine, and a CV that arrives with broken line breaks was still your responsibility.
When the CV is not what is being assessed
An anonymous jury stage may withhold a CV or other identifying information; the call specifies what is hidden. Submit a CV only where requested and follow the actual anonymity instructions.
For grants and fellowships or commission RFQs, relevant experience can help demonstrate delivery capacity. Select evidence connected to the proposed activity and scale rather than relying on exhibition count alone.