Went to a PV last night. The venue is described on their website as ‘a beautiful Grade II listed building, situated in Liverpool’s famous Hope Street quarter, close to the city centre. Attracting thousands of visitors each year, its facilities include a thriving café bar, a women’s health suite, excellent conference facilities and a 30 place nursery’.
Sounds great and it is free to exhibit in, but I wouldn’t really recommend it as an exhibition venue. (One of the many places I’ve regretted showing in and a major part of my rethink in exhibition strategy)
Of course, the artwork itself in this present exhibition was great, but apart from the crowd that turned up last night ( us all going up on mass from work ) No ‘outsiders’ went. No one curious enough to see the work… all too busy …or perhaps just put off by the venue?
But we still use these places in the hope that a big break will come…. ( a quote I stole from Twitter)
Interesting… I was just browsing through some exhibition opportunities and saw that one gallery asked for £20 just to submit a proposal. That’s new. Do galleries do that now?
Well, I thought my last post about the vandalism at a public residency was hard enough, but I just read the comment from Franny Swann about her experience. (See comments on my last post) She is an incredibly brave artist to go through that!
I remember years ago when Tate Liverpool hosted artist in residence schemes….. Marion Coutts, Neville Gabie and Paul Rooney were all there at one time. Yes, their studios were very nice and well presented – but I distinctly remember then how quiet and how few visitors they had.
I’m still adamant that I will look for projects in more ‘unusual’ places so that my work reaches a wider audience.
The question of space to exhibit our work seems to have reared its head again over the last few days.
I’ve just read over Carol Ramsey’s blog about her residency at the Butterfly Park in New Ferry and was horrified to find out that it had been vandalised. It is such an awful thing to find that there are people out there with total disregard to someone else’s work.
The butterfly park is an area similar in nature to Leasowe. Quite a few people have asked me whether ‘it is safe’ to even park their car near where I have my residency at the Millennium centre. It is after all, set in a less salubrious housing estate. To describe where to find it, I’ve often referred to a pub just a few doors down, but I never knew the name of it because most of the letters are missing from its sign. For some reason – this puts people off visiting. This is a shame, as everyone I have encountered there so far, have been an absolute delight. As I’m sure are the residents close to the park in New Ferry.
So – should we only be looking for ‘quality exhibition opps’ as someone stated in a recent posting? I personally don’t think so. Paying for exhibition space is not a guarentee that the work will not be damaged.
Nor does it mean that the work will be viewed by more people.
Think I’ve managed to wangle my way out of running a ‘food related’ workshop at next week’s fun day at LTD. The theme of the event is ‘Healthy eating and Fitness’ – a topic that Roy, the Centre’s director has been trying to drum into the local residents since he started working there. He had the cafe stocked with great vegetarian options with plenty of fresh fruit, but now the fry ups and chips had slowly crept back on the menu.
After a week of thinking up everything from fruit filled hats to apple footballs, they realised it wasn’t going to work and I am off the hook. I am free to sit in the studio on the day and continue with my own work. Phew!
