A couple of months ago I arranged an exhibition with another artist here in Portugal.
Me with one of our paintings
The entire show was organized by the two of us with the help of close friends and family. It was a new and extremely valuable experience that I encourage every artist to try out. The things I learned about marketing, organization and what actually goes into the making of an exhibit made me grow a lot as a self employed and independent artist. One if not the biggest lessons I got was, You CAN do what you envision, the worst thing that can happen if you ask is a NO and people are generally very sweet and helpful!
So, why should you try to organize an exhibition completely from scratch as an artist? Here are the points that made me want to take on the challenge;
- You are in total control
- You don’t have to work with commission
- You have to break out of your shell and practice self-promotion
- You get a lot of experience
- You can angel the show in any way you want
- You get to play gallerist and know what to look for in future collaborations
Being in total control can be both frightening and exciting. In one way you don’t leave your faith in someone else’s hands, but if it all goes to hell you’re going to blame yourself … a lot. First of all let me make it clear that I did NOT do this project because I hate galleries or have had bad experience showing in one, on the contrary. This was just an experiment I had thought about for some time and I felt that the time was right after just moving to another country and not having a name there yet.
So where do you start? We already knew what our show was going to be about. It was going to be about a famous beach where we lived called Praia do Guincho. Because the beach is held very dear by the people of the surrounding villages and cities we knew we wanted to keep it as local as possible. We decided on the center of the closest city, Cascais.
We started out by having a day where we just walked around and explored the city. We mapped out all the spaces for rent and talked pros and cons. Some were too small, some too big. Others didn’t have the light others didn’t have the right hanging mechanisms. In the end we had a short list of places that we later on went to enquire about availability and price.
Here are some of the locations we were looking at;
And here is the one we decided on;
Good light, central location, reasonable price, very helpful leasers and good hanging opportunities.
Another thing we were sure about was the time period we wanted to show our paintings. And the period was; ONE DAY. Why you might ask, that’s an awful little time for a lot of work! People might not have the opportunity to come that ONE day either and they might not get the chance to see it and you will miss out on sales. Well, that is true, but after showing on various occasions and locations, if it is one thing both our experiences had thought us it was that majority of the work, if not ALL the work that will sell during the exhibition period, will sell on the opening night, the night of the vernissage. It is also a good way to put a bit of extra pressure on people if they are in doubt about buying. Chances are if they have the time to go home and think about it, they will not come back.
So what else did we need to make our ONE day exhibition come together? Well, quite a lot it turns out!
Number 2 on the list after finding the location was MARKETING.
Now, there is a lot of ways to do marketing. What we did were the following;
- Personal invitations.
We ordered a few hundred personal invitation cards that we put in envelopes and went around putting into all the wealthiest people’s mailboxes plus to the people living closest to Guincho.
- Flyers
We ordered, I think it was 2000 flyers? That we went around putting into hotels, museums, cafes and other public places, in the city and near the beach.
- Billboard posters.
We made a couple of billboard posters that we put up close to our exhibition space for everyone passing by to see and get curious.
- Emails.
We sent a lot of emails with a picture of our personal invite attached to different organizations and schools.
- Facebook.
We created a facebook page that we updated with pictures of paintings and news around the show. We also paid for advertisement to connect our event to people living in the area interested in art and culture.
- Website.
We made a website with info about our work, the project and links to our private websites for people to look at and get interested.
- The jungle drums.
In addition to this of course we had everyone we knew talk about our show to all the people they knew and to save the date.
Number 3 on the list was refreshments! In the beginning we were imagining grand canapés and sparkling wine, but we quickly realized that as we would be in charge of making and serving the food and drinks ourselves, we would have to calm it down. What we ended up with was; White and red wine, cheese, chorizo, olives and chocolate cake. It was quite the success, but were I to do it again I think I would pay someone else to handle the food and wine. It added a lot of extra stress and I do actually believe that the people attending would have been very satisfied with just the wine.
Our canapé test run;
Number 4 was the day before the big day, HANGING. All in all it took a few hours to get all the paintings up on the wall and looking nice. We decided not to frame our paintings and had a rather alternative hanging method designed by ourselves, but if there is one advice I want to give you about hanging paintings thou it is this; LET THERE BE ENOUGH SPACE BETWEEN THEM! Nothing bothers me more than when I go to see a show and all the paintings are crammed together. You can’t focus on the one in front of you without seeing the one next to it in the corner of your eye! Super annoying.
Here is the space all ready hung for our show the next day;
So there it is, how (more or less) to organize an independent show/ exhibit.
I am very happy and proud to say the day and night was a success and we sold over half the paintings! We even landed a boutique hotel in the area to have the rest of the paintings on show after we took down the exhibit from which we now only have a couple of paintings left.
So why not try it for yourself if you’re an artist without a gallery contract or just want to change things up a bit with a new experience that will make you learn new things?
If you do I wish you the best of luck and hope you have lots of fun and success!