Be like Wally, become visible, be discoverable : Ashurst Art Prize: Advice #ArtPrize #Ashurst @OaktreeandTiger

A gallery owner, an artist and a art advisor went into a bar, and....


Well when it is Conrad Carvalho, Jessica Carlisle and David Anthony Hall
it isn't a joke.

Last night I went to a fantastic presentation by the Ashurst Art Prize.  It really makes it even more  worth while entering prizes when they come with this level of free professional development.  It was a talk about attracting gallery representation.

At the start of the evening I was talking to a very interesting Danish artist about the difference in gender relationships in the UK and Denmark.  In particular about how structurally Denmark is set up for gender equality, and has been for years which means that culturally assumptions are simply already embedded in a way that they are not here, about equal maternity/paternity leave and equal expectations on women and men to have careers and take on caring roles.

  Essentially this conversation and the talk afterwards were  about developing relationships within a specific cultural setting: This is what I took away...

So the balance is like that of relationships,  you don't just want any attention, you want the right attention. Being independent can be the best bet, and also finding a suitable gallery that offers an attractive deal and who is attracted to your work can make life easier. And you want a relationship that is not exploitative.  Don't be afraid to say no to a bad deal and don't say yes to the first thing to come along just because it has come along.  In developing a relationship with a gallery you both want to be in it for the long haul, so it takes work, mutual respect and understanding.  There needs to be space to grow and change, and sometimes you may grow out of each other.  Exclusivity deals tend to be less common at the emerging end of the market, and more likely at high end high price high reputation end which might, hopefully come later in your career.

Spend time researching galleries, in particular what is their platform? aesthetic? geographic reach?  What is their price range? Do they take on emerging artists?  Galleries want to work with artists they like and artists need to work with galleries they like.  The basis of the relationship needs to be trust.

Develop relationships, go to their shows and see their stands at art fairs, however when making an approach choose a time when they are not busy, and pop in for a chat.  Be upfront that you are an artist, and don't take up their time when they are in the business of selling. Follow up later with  a bit more information, an email with a link to your website and Instagram maybe, an invitation to see you at an art fair/show.  When participating in art fairs and shows always show your work at its best, spend that money on framing etc and presenting properly.

Building these relationships takes persistence, patience and trust. And an important area for trust building is pricing, make sure your pricing is consistent across platforms, or you risk becoming unsaleable.

Concentrate on developing relationships with a small number of galleries, because while you probably won't go down an exclusive route, it is only worth putting work into attracting galleries that are attractive to you, and better to put more time into less places. "Which pocket do you want to belong in?"

Do not dismiss the possibility of representation from galleries abroad.

Say no to galleries who ask you to pay for their representation, the only acceptable model is one of taking commission, and being signed up for representation by a gallery who does this is bad for your reputation. Your reputation is less harmed by attending less high status art fairs although it is  better to go for ones with better names.

Don't be too disappointed if you don't sell much work at your first show with a gallery, if you and the gallery are in it for the long haul then this initial show should be about establishing you with their clients. Expect your gallery to facilitate you meeting the people interested in your work, and expect to offer commision to the gallery if one of these contacts offers you a sale direct.

Expect it to be hard work.

Jobs to do:
Make sure you have good quality images and an up to date CV.
Do your research: What is it about a particular gallery that you like, let them know directly. And have you been to a great show there? tweet about it/ review it/blog about it. Make the most of independent Art Fairs by showing your work at your best and taking the opportunity for networking and collecting contacts, once again do not be disappointed if you don't make many sales at the first one remember it is about establishing yourself with potential clients.

Consider more than galleries, what about consultants, agents, partners, sponsors and curators?

Make sure your website is focussed on your art and that the images are good quality and immediate to see.  Keep your Instagram current with good quality images.  Use these accounts to reaffirm real world contacts and visa versa.

Generally don't do things for free unless there are other benefits. Don't give away your work it devalues the rest of your work, but do for example loan your work to suitable institutions for a set period of time as a way of building relationships or audience.

Newsletters are for people already interested in coming to your events, should be about once a quarter, contain a big image and a small amount of text. They are not suitable for building relationships with galleries  which needs to be personal and focused.

Know when to say no.

Be like Wally, become visible, be discoverable.

Also be personable, inventive, honest and true.
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Lost Girl 2 Work in progress, 1mx1m

This weeks work in progress is in my "Lost Girl" series.  Using traditional pigments and oil painting media, I have been playing with what I can make it do and have started a new painting. Arising from my exploration of indigo as a pigment I decided to go back to other traditional pigments and explore them within  a limited palette to push the boundaries of what can be achieved in building colour and tone by layering and pulling back,using different ratios of mixers, confining in order to break out, and exploring a long term fascination with tone. So above is the initial layer on  the final piece waiting for more attentionn, and below are the little bits of experimenting with using tonal spectra  and gloss to matt differentials to create space.

The Lost Girl series are thematically linked by creating spaces for lost memories.

Official poster for The Thames: The ARTery of London curated by Plastic Propaganda

come along and join in

Thames Project: Bedload Part 1 and Part 2: at #TheThamesThe ARTeryofLondon @plasticp1 @stkats #art #exhibition #Thames #origins

The work entitled Bedload part 1 and 2  started in the summer when the A20 was blocked and instead of heading off to Kent, my daughter and I diverted to Southend, for a summer's day at the beach.  While we were there she did what she has often done and filled a container with sand from the beach and asked if we could keep it.  This got us thinking about what it might contain, the sand, (probably brought in by the Council) would contain all sorts of tiny deposits from the river.  The river Thames which originates across the country in the West.  Not only the literal physical deposits, but also all the thoughts and feelings of the people who had used it in the time it took to reach the sea.  All the trade, the pleasure, the tears, all the thoughts; thought as people stood on all the bridges that cross the river, as they played in boats, as they worked on,  in and by the river; all the stories lost into the Thames.

That was when we started to think about collecting bedload from the full length of the river, and Mimi thought of the title. In my mind was the reflection of increased complexity as the river matures, the way in which the river primarily collects material in its early stages and deposits more as it moves on down.  We relflected this in the process of collecting material:  Mimi collected, I carried and deposited it into the work, which we discussed and collaborated in creating.

 In addition to this we thought of the way in which the river embodies place at its different stages, so that at its source it crosses fields, adding to the lushness of the grass when wet and reducing it when the bed is dry as it was when we were there.

 It intertwines with agriculture, and less than a mile in has a manmade damn of some kind and very quickly a bridge, but when we were there in October no real river.  The interplay between it and the natural world is evident in the eroded wood we found in its dry bed  which became part of Bedload part 2.

The river already embodied the balance found along its full length, between economic: As an agricultural resource, and leisure : As a spot for people taking a country walk.

The stories the river holds are of itself here at the start are alternately full and dry. A source which is sometimes no source at all... And the questions it seemed to ask at this stage are: Is Thames Head really true to its name?  And while dominantly natural is there any wildness here?  Is our longest river tame from the start?

Our next collection point was Oxford: Here there was a mix of wet and dry, the river was full of boats, many of which were full of students, and the water meadows were dry and full of cattle.  There was a sense here that collecting the bedload was both a riskier and probably a dirtier job.  The

river had recently been dredged so that where it was flowing it rapidly became quite deep. We took a sample from the side of the river.  We also picked one up from the dry bed of the stream that runs through the water meadows, this however runs under the city and emerges from a pipe with a distinctly sewer like appearance which is rather disconcerting, and made hand washing a priority.

Where the river runs through Oxford it serves the city with its complicated population divide, the students who are temporary residents and the long term residents many of whom work at the University and many of whom do not.  A city bounded in an ancient history, and yet by its nature in a state of constant flux.  A city caught up in traditions and at the same time holding some of the most cutting edge research and thinking in the world. A city both essentially British and eminently international.  And these complex parts of the identity of modern Britain are played out as the river cuts through the country from West to East along the rest of its route.  And here is where the metaphor of the Thames as a Lethe starts to hold true for me.  Once the population of the river become dense and complex, and the arguments about identity start to arise.  Because here is  the question that arises here.  What is the identity of Britain?  Is it not the case that it is all of these things, international and national? parochial and ground breaking? Traditional, conservative and innovative and liberal?  Silly and serious? If you took the stories of any one Oxford bridge running across the river on one day would they not contain all of these things? If you only see one side of this at any time you are forgetting the other.

So once we reached London and the deposits contained so much more in the

way of industrial products and manufactured bits and pieces, where the river was in the process of collecting and depositting at the same time, the way in which the river holds our stories spitting out fractions of stories had caught our imagination.


This is the background and process that we went through in creating Bedlam 1 and Bedlam 2: Thames' Empty Bed which will be showing in The Thames: The ARTery of London,  at Devon House, St Katharine Docks between 4 and 18 December.  I will be there

The river Thames runs across the country, collecting evidence in its bedload of all that it has been through, both physically, in time, and  metaphorically. Collecting from here and depositing there in fragments, like a giant Lethe. These works explore the metaphor of the Thames as a Lethe, holding all the lost stories of London, the thoughts that have disolved as people stand on the bridges, the physical deposits of its ancient history, the evidence it holds of both human endeavors and disappointments. And in particular we have a fascination with the way a river matures along its route, collecting most in its early stages and depositing most in its meandering maturity.

In the painting “Fulham Lethe”, the Thames holds all our lost dreams, and I have created the space to consider those dreams.

Sarah Needham

Bedload Part1

The piece “ Bedload” is a participatory project which I started with my daughter, she is 12, just emerging from childhood.  She took the role of collector of information, I of recorder, depositor.  We have visited the Thames from Thames Head to Southend and collected  samples of the bedload which are seen here in testubes.  We have wondered about what they might contain, what evidence of geology, of stories, of histories, new ideas and dreams in the different locations and how these change as the river matures. 

This work  invites participation, with small containers for the viewer to take away, tiny messages in bottles  and respond to the piece with their own collection from the bedload. It is the starting point for a project that will continue online through my blog.  artfromlondonmarkets.blogspot.com :Thames Project

Bedload Part 2

“Thames’ Empty Bed”: 

Larger deposits collected from the Thames, evidence of the Thames starting point in nature, through the very human geography of London and the maturation point at the sea where nature and humanmade struggle for dominance.  While collecting these items we came across what looked like a human shoulder blade(not collected), hoped it was in fact animal but it made us think about how ambiguous the evidence we were collecting was.  Ambiguity less present in Tracey Emin’s more famous bed.

  

Reflection and physicality at the heart of making

Having been quite excited by some of the connections which have come out of Parallax I have been knocked sideways by a horrible bug, and stuck with a  fuzzy brain and floppy body, which leaves me challenged by  a few looming deadlines, so I am not going to write much here, apart from a few small thoughts  on the process of making.  These thoughts really are small because my thought processes have not recovered completely.

Art is a physical process as well as an intellectual one, and a reflective process at that.  While I may start off with a lot of thinking and a bit of drawing and fiddling about, researching, and I certainly start of with some kind of process of collecting....... ideas, media, marks. However much preparation I may have done: While in the making I need both my brain to be working to allow properly for reflective interactions with the piece, and my levels of physical wellness to be there for the physical act of actually making.  The tranformative process requires the whole of you.

I have collected a load of material with my daughter for a small project "bedload"- we want to make a piece for a show with an invitation to collaborate in our process, and tonight and tommorow night we need to assemble it reflectively, I have kept putting it off but now we are close to a deadline.....here's a brief and selected photographic record of some of the research and process

Thames Head

First collection

first manmade structure

Walking the dry bed

first bridge

first city- Oxford

 boats at Oxford

central London

Bankside

From the State to the Church 

Southend

river towards the sea

 When I am better I will write about our process and thoughts.

And this got me thinking; those artists who work through illness and disability, well that's stunning, because at the moment I am finding it so difficult to do.  Which makes me all the more inspried by artists like Paul Brown who have faced and met such challenges and make fabulous work.