Post 10
Christian Mooney – 2 July
Not to repeat myself too much, although at this stage it seemed clear that some of the given advice was overlapping from the 5 mentors but of course with individual nuances. So I want to just touch again on some things I think might help other artists on a_n to read or some more specifics from Christian’s own point of view which came up during our conversation.
We spoke about ; the importance of the website with some suggestions, specifically which images he thought would work well as jpegs, he said Vivid would be a great jpeg and he seemed to like Tessalate as a painting. When editing the images he asked which I would save from a burning house – I quite like this phrase now – and referring to the best ones as ‘burning house paintings/works’! After this he got me to pick 2 – I chose Scatter and Dust as my current strongest, for various reasons.
Tessellate. 2014. Oil paint on pigmented gesso panel. 60 x 42 cm
We spoke about a new phrase he has noticed recently – Zombification – which refers to obsession with process, which he thought was very in vogue and relevant to part of my way of working with a surface.
We also spoke about the use of twitter (which I’m not that great at); SPACE Studio ; getting people to my studio (which I’m improving at) ; to question what and who is your target & who is your audience? ; Audrey Reynolds (Modern & Ancient artist) ; the fact that curators would want to see something like the ‘Fragments’ in the studio – to keep something back and exciting for them on their visit.
He also highlighted, in a business-like way the importance of doing a 1-5 year plan; writers who I could connect with; to do an Excel spreadsheet of all people you have worked with and all the people you want to work with ; being more focused with who your work is shown within the context of other artists and to think of my ‘10 second sell’.
As I have mentioned recently my newly-pared down website is very nearly completed and will be live asap, so upon our meeting Christian did say that having been to the studio and with the memory of visiting the site the night before that it currently looked dull in comparison to the work in studio. This is something I am working upon with various small strategies to bridge the gap between the physical work and its digital impact.
Overall, I can add Christian’s helpful comments to a long long pile now to check against (as I have already done a lot in response to them in the meantime) and see what more I can proactively do.
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Christian Mooney is Gallery Owner of Arcade
This month Arcade is participating at both Frieze Art Fair – Focus section Stand J9 and Sunday Art Fair.
