I was recently contacted by a gallery and invited to exhibit with them and they were quite offhand with me. It got me thinking- I am tired of galleries that ask for a large sum of money either through the sale, upfront or both. I am tired of being treated like I should be thankful for being shown in a space, I would like to be treated with some respect. For one of the first times in my life, I turned it down.
A friend of mine, Leo, gave me some great advice, as well as a link to this very useful article. Much of it is plain common sense, but it also brings up some very thought provoking ideas and I highly recommend it to anybody serious about exhibiting on a professional level.
I think there are a lot of you out there who are really upping their game with your work and how you want it represented, so this is for you guys.
Remember, art galleries need us.
http://www.artbusiness.com/osoqutscawas.html
This one is particularly interesting too:
http://artcalendar.com/article.asp?ID=145
You know one thing? In the last times are appearing a new concept of art expo that I love. A concept of Underground expo, a few guys, a big house, loft, old building or PUB, a great work of divulgation, and we have a excellent way to show and see some art. In the most of cases this kind of expo are associated to a party, with music, some drinks, and some mad people (in the good way, of course). To me it’s not only a good way to show art work, but to know new and interesting people to. This is not a new concept, it happens in New York, Europe (Germany, Spain, Portugal, etc) and in many other parts of the world to.
This that is now happening to you about the galleries, happens every time, when they contact whit emergent artists. The young artists want to show them work, so, the gallery makes it looks like is making a great favor, instead, what’s real happens is that the gallery is making moony with someone else work.
But this is the kind of thing that happens not only in the art world, but the many other cases. One example near me: One young designer called Naulila Luis, have been invited to participate in “experimenta design” (it’s a design happening that result of a association of a museum of design, other partnerships of the national design world, and Coca-Cola) so, when she have questioned the “experimenta design” crew about money, they didn’t want to pay nothing, because it was a honor to the designer participate in this event (Naulila Luis is one of the bests emergent designers in Portugal).
So what I want to say with this is that are many galleries, people, others, whatever, making moony whit someone’s work, with the excuse that “this is a honor to you participate” or “ it’s a great opportunity to you show your work in our gallery”
Naulila says that “design is not charity”, you can say ART IS NOT CHARITY
kisses
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?
Hi there!
You sure can. What is it for?