Day one at the Prelude art fair and it's fascinating here watching all the market traders at work. At the moment the central market area is under construction so the main market area has been moved so the art fair forms an L-shape alongside the market traders. It's a nice busy, buzzy environment which should get even better on the weekend. One reason I chose to take part in this show (I limited myself to 2 self-representing art fairs this year, not including Urban Art) was because the place seemed hard to beat. Spitalfields is a gorgeous historic market. I just love this description:
Spitalfields is one of the City’s younger markets, starting life as a thirteenth century market in a field next to St Mary Spittel on the edge of the Square Mile.
from the
City of London site. (emphasis in bold is mine) It's now a hub of traders, restaurants and quirky shops right next to the heart of London City. Placement and potential footfall is always something important to look for in an event. While there are exceptions and your work can stand out and find just the right couple of buyers in an abandoned warehouse exhibition, ideally if you're paying for space to show your work you need to know there's a reliable audience there to see it.
Which brings me to the point of paying to exhibit at all. Opinions on this vary widely and I've known artists who do well from both ends of the spectrum. I personally don't hold with paying to exhibit my work in gallery-type spaces - selling in a shop/gallery is why I pay a commission rate to the gallery. They know their stuff and their clients, they work hard to do the selling, they have the overheads. But if an artist pays for the exhibition space then at least in part the gallery's costs are covered. What incentive is there for them to push the sales? Most good galleries also know the paid galleries (or vanity galleries, as they are called) so they recognise them on an artist's CV. In this sense we can be double-injuring ourselves - being out of pocket for the exhibition space alone and then prejudicing other galleries against showing our work. Better to have a sparse but well-earned set of small shows on your CV then a long list of impressive-looking exhibitions you only got because you paid to display.
Art fairs and artist fairs are another kettle of fish entirely. These fall under the self-representing category and can be a great step on the ladder, whether you're at the start of the ladder or somewhere up above - each artist needs to consider each fair for their work. I did a lot of fair in my first few years, a LOT. I probably averaged one a month and it was exhausting work. I learned a lot though - how to present and hang my work, how to approach and talk to visitors, how to make a sale, how little or much to show, to build my mailing list, and not least of all how to choose the best art fairs for my work. And of course I can't overlook the fact that galleries found me through those first fairs. In the beginning I saw it as a way of investing in my business, and it literally was my advertising and marketing budget that paid for the fairs. A good art will either be an event that already draws a huge audience, so that I know I'm getting far more new exposure than say a gallery would draw, or it's in a place that has a unique draw and where there may not be a gallery anyway. So in this sense Spitalfields has that unique draw. In addition galleries visit art fairs (they don't visit vanity gallery art exhibitions) to look for new talent, so it's exposure on two levels.
Addendum:
Bikes bikes everywhere.... nice commuter bikes, cheap and dirty little hybrids, slick road bikes, mountain bikes crying out for some dirt rather than tarmac, cute little folding bikes (and in pink!). If I sell my two big paintings, can I go buy a bike? It's a business expense, right? Did I mention that there's an Evans and a CycleSurgery right here? It's just too tempting. (I have already bought some 3/4 tights - before the market even opened on Friday!)Image above:
Boxing Day, Dover 50cmx50cm, currently on show at Prelude
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