I have been reading Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal this week. It throws a fascinating light on the experience of getting old and I commend it to everyone. As a window on the world of narrowed horizons and the choices available to the elderly and frail it is fascinating. I suppose it was a particularly relevant book for me, given my own father’s increasing frailty but I think the main message in it for me is actually that all of us need to be prepared for this stage of our lives which does not tend to treat us kindly.
There is a section in it which struck a chord with me very loudly. Gawande talks about the change in how we seek to spend out time at different stages of our lives. ‘When horizons are measured in decades, which might as well be infinity to human beings, you most desire all the stuff at the top of Maslow’s pyramid – achievement, creativity and other attributes of “self-actualization”. But as your horizons contract – when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain – your focus shifts to the here and now, to every day pleasures and the people closest to you’. (Gawande, 2014, p.97)
This explains a couple of conversations which I have been involved with over the past couple of weeks. Both during my mentoring session and during the Bristol seminar by Patricia van den Akker (See my last post) I have been asked the ‘where will your business be 5/10/20 years from now’ question. I have found this particularly difficult to answer this time around: I am aware of a definite shift in my energy levels and inclinations recently and I find that my knee jerk response to this question is ‘who says it will be anywhere at all!’ But this makes things very awkward. If I don’t know where I am going why set off? What IS the point?
There are still good friends who are certain that what I do is simply a hobby, that I do it to keep myself amused. I suppose it did begin like that and then there was a stage where I needed an outlet for my work so that, at the final reckoning, my children didn’t enter the loft with fear and trepidation wondering what on Earth to do with all those pots! But now I have to acknowledge that things have gone beyond that. I am chasing a dream of it being successful and so presumably I do need to know what success is going to look like when I get there.
Why does it have to be all about the money?I find that cannot drift about simply making stuff and hoping that people like it, I need a reason to make in the first place and, for me, that needs to be connected to somebody else wanting it. But at the same time, I am not sure that I have to be utterly driven by building the business. I need some aims but they don’t have to be measured in financial terms. And anyway, what does success look like? I don’t think that it necessarily has to have a load of pound signs in front of it. It is something I need to give some more thought to but I do know roughly what it looks like and I will share it as it happens. In the meantime though, I am no longer sure that we do have all the time in the World!
During this last week the exhibition Light, Clay, Colour ended and another one, for the finalists of the Royal Arts Prize started and it has got me thinking about the nature of different types of exhibition and the pros and cons of each sort.
Our three person exhibition at Fountain Gallery attracted a lot of attention. We must have averaged about 25 visitors per day with some days being much busier than others. We each sold work, although I think we would all agree that we would have liked to have sold more, but at a self invigilated show such as this, at least we keep what we make. There is no gallery commission and that has to be a huge bonus.
Preparation takes a lot of time.
We also enjoyed plenty of feedback from our visitors. People are not shy about saying what they like about a piece and what they don’t. They offer comments which can spark a trail of thoughts and might eventually lead to a whole new body of work. I had a couple of very interesting discussions along those lines and am excited to know where they might lead. On the down side however, I spent a lot of admin time on this exhibition. Preparing press releases, most of which got me nowhere; helping to design, print and deliver fliers; organising the hanging, displaying and labelling of work; writing, editing and printing out price lists and artists’ profiles. The list goes on! I also had a lot of up front costs: the hire of the space, the printing of publicity materials, the drinks and nibbles for the private view to name a few. Then, when the exhibition was on, it was down to the three of us to invigilate – that is a lot of hours sitting in the gallery!
The Royal Arts Prize exhibition is a totally different kettle of fish:
The aim of the Royal Arts Prize Exhibition and Award is to search out for and showcase artworks by artists that have embraced their individual exegesis in art, artworks that are a product of an inner balance in a world full of diversity and often chaos.
An exhibition of 26 shortlisted artists for the Royal Arts Prize. The prize will be awarded to artists that present works that are the product of an emotional connection between dream and reality; we’re exhibiting contemporary art that shows the force driving individuals to express and affirm their personality and ego, through today’s modern art landscape. A winner will be selected by a judging panel made up of Art Professionals and Artists. There will also be a Visitor’s Choice Prize awarded to the Artist with the most votes by the visiting public.
You enter the competition, if you are fortunate enough to be shortlisted you take your chosen pieces to the gallery and leave them there. You come back three days later for the private view where you drink their wine and eat their canapé whilst trying to look intelligent, artistic and graceful and then you swan off home and let them sell your work.
BUT . . .
You pay a fair price to enter the competition and there is no guarantee of being among the chosen few.
You have fewer pieces on show
You have no control over the publicity, except for a pdf invitation prepared by the gallery which you have to accept, warts and all. In this particular case it looked great and I was really excited by it but, given the dates on the invitation, some of my guests arrived to discover that the exhibition had taken longer than expected to hang and so they had not opened on the day they had announced! If we had been organising it ourselves we could not have got away with that.
You have to accept the price that they sell your work for will not necessarily be the price that you put on it and that you sometimes have little say over that.
Proof reading the invitation should be the gallery’s responsibility.
On the up side, the gallery has a huge and interested client base, the private view included people that the gallery has on its mailing list, many of whom don’t know you, and so this kind of exhibition is a great opportunity for building your own customer base and you don’t pay commission for work sold.
The third sort of exhibition in which I am currently involved is through my regular gallery. Tregony Gallery is what I would call the ‘slow burn’ of exhibiting. I have had work with this gallery for some time now and I like to think that we are building a good relationship. I seem to be receiving a steady flow of sales. I don’t pay to exhibit my work but they charge me a percentage on everything that I sell through them. This seems entirely fair given what they do in terms of invigilation, publicity and promoting their artists. If you get a good gallery, and Tregony is, the work just sells and you get the money – well some of it at least! I just have a responsibility to the gallery to keep supplying them with the work that they want. The customer feedback is through Brian and Judy so it is slightly less ‘in my face’. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad one! All decisions about the running of the gallery are made way over my head. I’m dead certain that is a good thing! So when the gallery came up with the idea of Tregony By the Sea and asked if I wanted to be involved I was thrilled!
Tregony Gallery presents ‘By the Sea’, a new event showcasing the best in contemporary and traditional artists, from locals to Londoners and recent graduates.
We are thrilled to be displaying new work and key pieces from a selection of our most talented artists and makers in the beautiful harbour setting of St Mawes.
Visit us at; Millennium Rooms, The Square, St Mawes TR2 5AG.
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As a window on the world of narrowed horizons and the choices available to the elderly and frail it is fascinating. I suppose it was a particularly relevant book for me, given my own father’s increasing frailty but I think the main message in it for me is actually that all of us need to be prepared for this stage of our lives which does not tend to treat us kindly.![sterling-pound-sign-of-money_318-60375[1]](https://bridgetmacklin.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/sterling-pound-sign-of-money_318-603751.jpg?w=150&h=150)
![tregonygallerybyt[1]](https://bridgetmacklin.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/tregonygallerybyt1.png?w=306&h=645 "tregonygallerybyt[1]")
![tregonygallerybyt1[1]](https://bridgetmacklin.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/tregonygallerybyt11.png?w=306&h=645 "tregonygallerybyt1[1]")
Bridget Macklin 