“Look at Kandinsky. He organised so many shows, he’s still a valid artist. Picasso organised vernissages…” Iavor Lubomirov, co-director and founder of ALISN (Artist-led Initiatives Support Network), is talking about the complexities of being an artist-curator. “I’m still at that point, where – and I may be naïve – I think I can do both.”
We’re talking at ALISN’s second annual Conference for Emerging Organisers, which took place on Saturday 24 November at Goldsmiths’ New Academic Building, with around 100 delegates representing over 60 organisations. ALISN stems from Lubomirov’s desire for a mutual support network that can answer the needs of artists who organise. In June this year, together with artist and ALISN co-director Bella Easton, Lubomirov set up Lubomirov-Easton, a project space and gallery for ALISN: “As an artist, you want to have your own show. I like it that I still can,” he explained.
ALISN was founded in 2007, when Lubomirov, a recent BA graduate, was looking for shows. “I put on my first show in an empty office building and invited everyone I then knew to invite everyone they knew.” That’s how the collaboration with co-founder Jordan Dalladay-Simpson began. Over the last two years more people have come on board and ALISN is now 10-strong.
The aim of this conference was to give arts organisers an opportunity to find out about each other and develop new collaborations. “I want people to stay as artists and not become art dealers,” said Lubomirov.
To avoid the event being too London-centric, delegates from artist-run spaces throughout the UK were invited to attend, including Dover Arts Development, Bristol Diving School, Temporary Arts Project and Salford’s Islington Mill. There were two topics for discussion: ‘Successful Public Relations and Marketing Strategies’ and ‘Real-Life Solutions to Financial Viability’. While the panelists displayed varying levels of openness regarding their strategies, the conference was cleverly scheduled in order to allow for plenty of networking and one-to-one chat; it was the latter that turned out to be most valuable.
On the ‘Real-Life Solutions…’ panel, Victoria Browne, founder of artists’ books publisher KALEID Editions, spoke of the artistic trajectory that led to setting up the project. While she has a business plan that involves investing in a presence at the London Art Book Fair for a five-year period, and she is committed to building transatlantic relationships, Browne has purposefully limited the commercial development opportunities in order to maintain the balance of being an artist/organiser. One of the ways she has managed to do this is through her regular teaching and KALEID’s symbiotic relationship with Art Academy.
Contrasting the economic climate of UK arts to that within other countries where she has studied and lectured, Browne said: “There is a scrambling around for money here, which I don’t think needs to happen.” Her particular reference point was Norway, where her peers get three-year working grants.
This sentiment was echoed outside of the panel discussion by delegates Bill Campbell and Maurice Carlin from Islington Mill, who talked positively about the infrastructure in the Netherlands: “More people in Amsterdam will buy art at a more reasonable price overall. Collecting is more familiar to people over there. We need a more balanced societal view on what being an artist is,” said Carlin.
Campbell added: “In the UK, artists have an odd relationship with being paid, either giving too much away, or over-pricing their services.”
While more than half the delegates were from DIY artists’ spaces, ALISN is also very focused on the art market. There was a consensus that new methods for raising capital within the arts are needed, but the panelists only touched the surface. Creative property developer and ‘Real-Life Solutions…’ panelist Robert Sonning talked about Londonewcastle’s dedicated investment in the arts, but it would have been good to explore more such models beyond the recurring necessity of the art fair. Whilst the gallerist-panelists gave some useful tips on art fairs – from total avoidance to choosing the right one – on the whole we were left unclear as to whether running a gallery is an unprofitable passion or a realistic business undertaking.
London consensus
Within the conference’s London contingent, there was a general feeling that Arts Council funding is at odds with projects whose audiences are predominantly artists and arts professionals. With more commercial routes open to them, many of these smaller organisations have chosen to take the self-funded or art market route, shunning ACE before it shuns them or compromises their vision.
Speaking outside the panel discussions, one artist-led organisation that felt Arts Council England encouragement was beneficial was Dover Arts Development (DAD). Their forthcoming project, ‘War and Peace’, aims to make the artists in artist-led organisations more visible. ACE positively encouraged the directors to include their own work in the show. As DAD director Clare Smith put it: “Isn’t that the whole point of DAD – doing what artists do?”
William Angus-Hughes, an artist who runs his own gallery space in London, explained why it’s important for artists to have experience of curating a show: “It helps them understand how much work goes into it. It also counters that thing of artists being against gallerists. Maybe I’ve been very lucky, but I’ve never met a gallerist who wasn’t very driven and inspired. I don’t see them as bad people.”
Emily Woodhouse from London-based Hotel Elephant, a studios and gallery that is in the process of becoming a CIC (community interest company), stated: “There’s not a lot of money around, but lots of people are doing it for the love, not the money.”
ALISN is keen to encourage playful ways of bringing more money into the sector, and their forthcoming project at London Art Fair involves paying for a booth and then sub-letting it to ten smaller organisations. It’s a canny business decision and an irreverent curatorial response to one of the more accepted financial art world models. It’s also a sign that artists are increasingly demanding to be let in to the art sales industry on their own terms. It will be interesting to see how this new wave of artist-dealers impact on the commercial art world system.
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