And so the time has come…

Exhibition day is almost upon you. You’ve loaded up the back of you compact car with all your artworks in such a way that you would think that your vehicle must defy the laws of the universe by having more interior space than is indicated by its exterior dimensions. Rear vision mirror view safety has made way for bubble wrap and canvas.

You walk through the gallery door, not sure what to expect…

If this is a commercial gallery then the chances are that this is where you now  leave the creations that you have slaved over so lovingly during the preceding months, now to be hung by the Gallery staff. The presentation of your artistic genius is in their hands.

If this is a community or self hosted exhibition then its now all up to you and you have a very short time to get everything up on the walls ready to stun your visitors with your all round clever-clogness. The white cube of  space echoes as you walk around inside. Blank. Empty and possibly a bit intimidating.

Questions race through your mind.

• “Do I  have enough artwork to fill this vast void?”
  • Yes of course you do! You measured the space before you started preparing for the exhibition. (You did, didn’t you? )
• “Will it look any good?”
  • Yes it will. Here’s a gallery secret. Those bright white halogen track lights on the ceiling make just about everything look a million dollars.
• “Is my art a load of rubbish and should I leave now?”
  • It’s too late. You’ve sent out all the invitations and the opening night party is tomorrow. Don’t worry. You are brilliant (*insert addition pep talk phrase of your own choice here).
• “Where is the ladder?”
  • Probably in the store room.

Gallery Hanging Systems

Most galleries that host artist run exhibitions have some kind of hanging system. Ideally it will be the adjustable kind with clear nylon hangers that drop from the ceiling and down the wall, with little metal adjustable hooks. Its best to find out though way before the time of your exhibition and have all your artworks prepared ready for hanging.

Tip!

I like to be prepared for the unexpected, so I carry a little red tool box containing all manner of hanging related bits and bobs. Mine has within it spare wire and string, screws, wall hooks, nails, wire, gaffa tape, removable double sided sticky pads, blu-tak, an assortment of small tools including a hammer, screwdrivers and my trusty bradall tool for making small holes. I’ve had to use it at just about every exhibition I’ve ever hung. I suggest you pack your own ‘survival kit’ similarly.

Bump In

Okay, time to bump in (not literally; this is the show-speak term for setting up your exhibition. Later you will ‘bump out’).

The first thing to do is to unload the car and stack all the artworks around the walls on the floor.  Don’t hang them yet and don’t be too fussy. Just drop them around the room in semi-organised thematic groups so you can see them all, placing any large feature pieces in the rough vicinity of where they might eventually hang.The thematic groups can be whatever you want them to be. Maybe it’s colour, maybe it’s subject matter. Maybe there’s a narrative story which guides the hanging.  It could be just whatever looks good together. Decide early on and your job will be easier.

Stand in the middle of the room and look around. Do all the artworks ‘work’ together? You will have to use some imagination as all the artworks are currently sitting on the floor.

Start sorting and moving the artworks around the walls (on the floor – don’t hang yet). Usually I find that at this stage that the artworks that don’t fit with each other stand out, and ‘call me’ to move them. The really good feature pieces that I want everyone to see get prime position, and I organised the others around them.

Got them sorted into groups? Good. Look at how all the groups work. You might have to swap entire groups around the room if they don’t play well together.

Steady as she goes

At this point it’s easy to get over excited and flustered, and in your mad rush to get everything sorted out, pick up an artwork and accidently bash it against a wall or another artwork. Once the bubble wrap is off, your artworks will suddenly seem to have a magnetic attraction to each other so take it easy. You don’t want be doing last minute restoration of scratches, dings and bumps right now.

Get an assistant to help you

Got all your artworks organised into groups? Good.

Now it’s time to hang your exhibition. It always good to have someone to assist if at all possible, with one person going up the ladder, and another to pass up artworks and then stand back and tell you if the arrangement on the wall is even and pleasing to the eye.

Hunting high and low

I prefer to hang all artworks at eye level (museum style) but that is not always possible. I suggest trying to hang at least one row directly at eye level and then arranging all the others above an below those.

This is the point at which madness can set in

It’s easy at this point to become obsessive about getting everything ‘straight’. Do not fall into this trap. Leave straightening till later as inevitably things will move. Only engage in obsessive straightening once all  the artworks are hanging in their final positions. Use blu-tak, sticky pads or cork pads to make sure artworks stay in place if required.

Lighting

If possible head up your step ladder to adjust the position of the lights for optimum loveliness. There’s generally only a limited number of spotlights available so you might have to make some strategic decisions to highlight key pieces,  with other artworks receiving just a general ambient light. Halogen lights can be hot. Be careful up there.

Price Cards

Okay, so the exhibition is hung, the lights are on and its looking like a million dollars.  Now is the time  to pop the little cards on the wall to indicate the catalogue number, title, medium and price. Don’t skimp. Make classy looking ones and hang them carefully so that they are easy to see and relate directly to their corresponding artwork.

Make yourself a nice cup of tea

You’ve spent all day loading, unloading, arranging, and running up and down ladders. You’re probably pretty tired by now. Put the kettle on, make a cup of tea and sit down quietly in the corner and admire what you’ve created. This exhibition has been months in the planning and execution, and now it’s finally here, in it’s rightful place. Enjoy it all to yourself for a while and don’t forget to get your camera out now and take a few pictures. The next time you see this exhibition it will be filled with people admiring your artworks, with you as the superstar centre of attention!

For some reason whenever charity committees get together there is always someone (let’s call her Jenny Brightspark) who displays their pure money raising genius to everyone by brightly suggesting “Lets have a charity art raffle / auction / lucky door prize”  (*delete as appropriate).

“Go to it!” says the rest of the committee approvingly,  excited at the prospect of free art from a (semi) famous artist being sold for thousands of dollars and thus filling their coffers extra super fast..much faster than trolling door to door selling tickets in the local middle class affluent money suburb.

…after all (they think) its a win for them (they get wads of money) and a win for the artist (all that lovely free publicity!).

Shortly after, YOU recieve a gushing email “I absolutely LURVVVE your art…I’m the organiser for a HUGE charity event raising money to rescue starving hamsters in Peru…Its going to be MASSIVE and FANTASTIC…you simply must take part. Please would you donate a painting (but preferably two) for the raffle. Oh, and as it’s a charity event please ship them at your own expense.  Yours Sincerely, Jenny Brightspark.”

“Wow!”, you say to yourself, “Someone loves my artwork…and they are inviting me to participate in AN EVENT… think of all the publicity…think of all the starving hamsters I can help…” (the real subtext of your thoughts actually being the thought of all the art you MIGHT sell if you just donate a couple of paintings and everyone suddenly discovers the genius that you are).

In the early part of your career when any invitation for anything seems like a massive honour, actually jumping on board and sending off your artworks (never to be seen again) seems like a brilliant and lucrative idea to be capitalized on some way down the track. BUT WAIT…

Is it actually a good idea? Or is it a complete and utter waste your time,  ultimately doing little or no good for those poor starving Peruvian Hamsters.

REALITY CHECK

• Unless you are a very very very famous artist (so famous that you are known to all, and therefore probably dead) no one will take any notice of your artwork as it is raffled, auctioned, or lucky door prized (other than the nice old dears who are buying a ticket or putting in a bid because your donated painting  will look good next to their blue Sofa).
• The artwork you donate will probably not be your best work, because of course you save those for the gallery, thereby also minimising your chances of your artwork taking the charity world by storm.
• Most people will just talk, eat, drink, fart and basically ignore your painting even as it is being held aloft during the part of proceedings allocated for holding things up in the air so everyone can see them.
• Most people are looking for a bargain, even at charity auctions, so unless the audience is in fact very rich and very drunk, there’s a high likelihood that your artwork if auctioned will sell for an embarrassingly low price potentially damaging your price reputation.

..So, what can you do to prevent this happening?

Fortunately, should you decide to  help extricate the hamsters from dire straits by stumping up your own paintings there are things you can do to make the best of the situation.

TOP TIPS FOR MAKING THE BEST OF A CHARITY EVENT

• Ask for details about pre-event publicity. Make sure you are mentioned and included.
• Actually attend – This is a networking opportunity. Work the room baby! Work it! Work it! Work it! Because your artwork is one of the stars of the show (it’s your job to make sure everyone knows that) you have a license to introduce yourself to everybody, and make sure everyone looks at your artwork.
• Have your mini art portfolio on hand at all times…along with your business card…show everybody.
• Make sure that your business card and a flier gets placed in any charity goodie bags that are being given out.
• When its time for a raffle or lucky door prize, stand on the stage with your painting, and personally hand it over to the winner.
• Make sure that the press get a photo of you with the winner of the painting (you may have to arrange this earlier so that the press are poised and ready). If you can’t get the press to be there get someone to take a photo and then send it to the press yourself along with a press release.
• If there is someone famous at the event, get them to stand next to you next to the painting, and then be photographed together.
• When chatting with people, take down the names and email addresses of anyone who shows an interest in your art. Don’t be shy about asking. In my experience very few people refuse to give their details if they are at all interested. Add them to your mailing list.
• Follow up with a ‘nice to meet you email’ after the event for everyone you got the details for. Thank the organisers too.

So by following the above tips you’ve made a heap of new contacts, made some new friends, not to mention assisting with relocation of starving rodents. The small furry animals of the world raise tiny paws to salute your generous donation.

Yes we’ve all watched Idol on TV, laughing and cringing as worryingly deluded people step up convinced that they are the next big thing, not even realising that their sense of reality is somewhat removed from the average.

You don’t want to be the equivalent of that person in the art world, so lets do a little investigation here before we start.

Are people really interested in your art? Do people stop and stare when they pass your art? Does it have that ‘certain something’, star quality, a ‘je ne sais quois?’.

It’s all relative of course. If you are a beginner artist then your art may not have reached it’s full potential yet, but there has to be a certain something about your art no matter what level of experience you have that makes people stop, look and get interested if you want to have any chance of success with your own art exhibition.

How do you know if your art is any good?

Lets defines terms here. By ‘good’ in terms of an art exhibition I mean interesting, engaging and that ultimately someone would be willing to transfer money from their bank account to yours to own it.

Good art, the kind that people want to see and buy (you want to make a living out of this, right?) engages them in some way. They stop for a good while and stare at it. They say things like “oh!” (in a fascinated way) or “now THAT’s interesting”. It induces some kind of emotional state. Good art gets a very real reaction.

Just because your best friend, mum, dad, great uncle, neighbour three doors down etc says that “you are very clever” and that your art is “pretty” does not necessarily mean that your art is good.

To know if your art is any good, you need to show it to people who don’t know you at all, people who don’t know or even care about ‘your story’.

How to find out the cold, hard truth about your art in one evening over a glass of wine

Here’s my subversive tip for really figuring out if your art is any good in terms of (at least some) people actually being interested in it before you invest your time and hard earned cash in the opening night of your life:

• Enter your art in local art competition exhibitions

Yes, this may seem obvious, but wait, there’s more…

If you actually get your work past the committee that chooses the artwork for the exhibition, depending on who the committee is, this might indicate some level of ‘goodness’ about your art, but we don’t really care about that at this stage because we are more interested in what ‘the street’ thinks about our art. What does Mr and Mrs everyday ordinary gallery going person think about what we have to offer? To find this out we need to go undercover.

I’ll illustrate the approach with a story:

When I was a child my mother would often enter her art in the local art competitions, and I would toddle off full of excitement with the family to opening night. Mum really wanted to know what people thought of her art and had no hesitation in sending me, as an undercover mini secret agent to find out the mood of the crowd in relation to her paintings. Glass of orange juice in hand I stealthily lurked in the vicinity of Mum’s creations and cast a sneaky ear on the conversations that were happening as each gallery goer passed the artwork. People can be quite open about their feelings when they think no one is listening, a small boy sipping on orange juice goes quite unnoticed, and I mentally noted down every word and dutifully reported back to Mum with every detail my young mind could remember. I still do this at my own art exhibitions today!

So your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• Find someone to stand unobtrusively around your artwork on the opening night of an exhibition acting as your undercover agent.

If its a big exhibition and no one even knows who you are then you could even do this yourself. Holding a glass of bubbly and quietly staring at the artworks next to yours will give you ample opportunity to tune in your ear to the mutterings of groups that pass your work. It’s not so much words you are listening for (though this helps), its more a case of judging how well people are engaging, stopping, staring, and noting things to each other about the work. Be aware though that an art competition opening night is filled with other artists, who tend to be arts biggest fans and biggest critics too!

If you do this a few times at a number of art competitions then you’ll start to build up a picture of how your art is stacking up against other art in terms of ‘goodness’. Notice how long do people stop and stare at other artworks in the competition. Does your art get more attention? less attention? more reaction? less reaction? Does it tend to get prime placement in the gallery? Does it get hidden away in a dark corner? Does it win? Winning art competitions is not necessarily the ultimate barometer of goodness but it can certainly help you on your mission; everyone loves a winner.

Spontaneous Adulation

Another marker of art that is likely to do well at an exhibition is that when you show it to people they ask if they can buy it. Again this may seem obvious, but really, if your art can induce someone to ask the price when they’ve never seen it before then the chances are that it might do well at your art show.

When I first started out in the art world I created screen-prints of my paintings in my garage. For some reason I showed them to the staff in the screen-printing supply shop where I bought my equipment. I was almost shocked when they were willing to hand over money right then and there for my screen-prints. It seemed everywhere I took them, people wanted to know if they could buy them or hang them in their gallery, framing shop, restaurant or home. I was even more surprised when an art agent came to seek me out after having heard about my art that hung in the screen print supply shop. When it came time for my exhibition opening night everything did indeed go well, and I made my first ever painting sale for $395 (a lot of money to me at the time) to someone I didn’t know before the exhibition had even opened.

It’s amazing how these things build momentum once you get started and you’ll never know if your art is any good unless you actually show people; so off you go, get out there and start the ball rolling!