TABLE MANNERS

2026


Barbati Gallery is pleased to present Table Manners, a group exhibition featuring 50 artists from 18 countries, all of whom have participated in The Artist Roundtable – a global platform founded in 2020 by Pia Sophie Ottes to foster dialogue, mentorship and collective empowerment among artists. The artists represented span the globe, from Argentina to China, Slovenia to the USA, Lebanon to the UK, the Philippines to Italy.

Marking the fifth anniversary of The Artist Roundtable, the exhibition is a celebration of the generosity, insight and support that artists and guest speakers have contributed to this evolving platform. What began during the 2020 lockdown as weekly conversations around an informal virtual table has developed into a dynamic community where experiences, questions and vulnerabilities are shared openly – reshaping how artists learn, relate and sustain one another.

Set in Venice, a historical crossroads of exchange, the exhibition Table Manners brings The Artist Roundtable’s ethos into physical space. The exhibition traces a journey through the textures of artistic life today: the doubts and breakthroughs, the solitude of the studio and the collective energy of dialogue. Each room reflects a different facet of what it means to grow as an artist over the past five years – not only in one’s practice, but in one’s capacity to listen, to collaborate, to be transparent and to support others.

More than a traditional group show, Table Manners invites visitors to consider the artist behind the artwork: the conversations that shaped each practice, the shared learning that fuelled development, and the communal infrastructure often hidden beneath individual success. At a moment when the art world still rarely speaks openly about collaboration, care and mutual support, this exhibition foregrounds these values as essential – not peripheral – to artistic creation.

Visitors are encouraged to “take a seat at the table” and encounter the exhibition’s key themes: community, curiosity, generosity, vulnerability, reciprocity, transparency. It is a rare opportunity to witness not only the diversity of contemporary artistic expression, but the collective spirit that has allowed these practices to flourish.

Table Manners. All images courtesy the artists and Barbati gallery, Venice, Italy. Photography Andrea Rossetti