Tea’s Instagram is full of communication. She uses the comment section as a way to build a direct line of communication to artist and viewer – public display of interaction making her account more personal/involved.
Sophie Tea Instagram
Active online presence – replies to DMs. Social media makes this easier, see below I have had contacted a few times where she has always responded welcomely – feel drawn to supporting her journey.
Stories – she uses stories daily to keep her followers up to date about works in progress of work/studios, chats and opening shows.
Due to COVID galleries haven’t been able to exhibit exhibitions. The Tate created a virtual tour very quickly in the pandemic – April 2020, including discussions, images and films of artworks. Using YouTube they displayed their virtual exhibition of Andy Warhol’s artwork – allowing all viewers to have an insight.
This gave a quick but in-depth overview and was potentially more successful than the actual exhibition in terms of facts, history and knowledge of Warhol which may be missed when looking around the space/artwork.
It worked well on the Tate website as it was fairly easy to use/navigate/find – Tate provides further information/link to the virtual tour/dates about when they exhibition will commence – everything you want/need to know.
Tate: Andy Warhol – Virtual Exhibition
Instagram’s algorithm has gradually updated their media platform e.g. video, attracting a range of viewers/creators – used to be videos uploaded to your profile (1 minute long), but now you have Reels (15 seconds long clip) and IGTV (1 hour long video). I like this aspect to Instagram it allows for tasters of artwork/behind the scenes. See below, I have only ever uploaded videos below a minute as they work well to show snippets of my work.
Ella Lockwood Instagram
Gagosian have used IGTV’s and created multiple series for their viewers of artists work/conversations while providing all information you need about the conversation and attachments to find artists work elsewhere, see below.
Gagosian Instagram
This was our L6 Interim exhibition in February, Congruous, with The Art Station. The appearance of the website works well with the lay out of the art – enough information about group work/individual artwork to attract viewers attention.
It’s bright/clean, doesn’t overwhelming/confusing the viewers with what is The Art Stations web design/the artwork – appears simple, allows the artwork to bounce off, plays to the visual of a gallery wall.
The website is easy to access, meaning it wasn’t hard to find to the exhibition. See below, the list of artists work feeds off of each other. However, it appears more effective on a laptop, on a phone screen each work feels detached from one another.
The use of gifs at each artists’ bio acts as a taster to see more/catches the viewers’ attention – works better rather than a slideshow where the viewers have the option to click through or not, see below.
Instagram has grown to become more about appearance – businesses having a colourful/aesthetically pleasing profiles, focus can be more on profile appearance than posts.
3 images/row Instagram posts is popular, see artist Juno Calypso below, it gives the viewers the more aspect of the main work e.g. behind the scenes/extras/another angle, like supporting work to invite the viewers to see more of the artist/work. However, “you run the risk of annoying your audience by spamming their feed with three very similar images at once.” (Basler, 2020).
Juno Calypso Instagram
I have started this approach to my art page, see below, creating grouped posts to suggest a series of works e.g. 6 print posts appear as one series of work, almost separating my Instagram as the black and white posts are another series, including detailed images (behind the scenes, me and work and different angles of prints).
Ella Lockwood Instagram
Consistency is key in Gagosian/Tate gallery with posts but not appearance – title, description provides everything the viewer needs to know about the artwork as well as specific hashtags to attract others. See below, due to COVID Gagosian posts 3 artworks a day to keep viewers updated with artworks/comments which would usually be done in the gallery. Keeps viewers interested is reflected in interactions.
