Havent posted for a while. Will have some images soon of my show at Object when I get them. I am so slack at remembering to either take the photos or even the camera that I got my good friend to take some for me. Just waiting for them to get to me now....
But in the mean time I have been a bit disheartened with the whole selling stuff in a gallery thing. Its not easy to make a living out of a craft but when the gallery puts some of your work in a locked cupboard that no-one can see it makes it slightly harder.
We give the work to them for free, so their displays look all nice, dont get paid till the piece is sold (and they have decided to do their books) and they make the same amount of money as me. Whats it all about??? They decide on where the work gets put, they decide if and when your work goes on display.... Do we have a say in what we want from the gallery, as in display, marketing etc.. NO we dont!!!! So why do we give them our stuff. As a jeweller its very frustrating and if no-one gave them the work on commission their beautiful, nicely made shelves would be bloody empty.
So what is to be done....I dont know. Can anyone help, does anyone have an idea, solution, opinion. Do we need a union or something. I dont know, all I know is that we need to have more of a say about our own work.
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Looking forward to seeing images of your show.
ReplyDeleteEven the thought of producing another several hundred pounds worth of work to hand over to another gallery for them to maybe sell, maybe not, disheartens me sometimes... but I think it is still one of the best ways of getting your work out there and worth it for that when something sells.. I guess you just have to take work out of the places that don't work for you and find somewhere better! If they're not going to work hard to sell your pieces then don't give them the chance of earning that commission from you! Fingers crossed for good galleries.
Cheers Holly for responding to my rant. Sometimes these things get on top of you and I think its going to be a very slow process to change things, but hopefully now with the interweb, some of these galleries will have to lift their game.
ReplyDeletesounds like there should be some thought and action on an artist run shop rather than an artist run gallery. but who knows maybe the 50% mark up is required to make that possible. i wonder what the over heads would be....might need to do a small business plan to see if it is possible.
ReplyDeleteyes that does sound good. a bit of investigation and maybe a good group of people who are interested and its a good possibility.....
ReplyDeleteMichelle you need your own workshop gallery, seriously ! Naomi and Kath would agree ! x Lauren
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