Sustainable Prospects - Francesca Genovese
Just running though my notes. I was keen to hear from Francesca on the webinar as I feel Fine Art gallery is where I one day aspire to be. She is the Director of Francesca Meffeo Gallery.
When asked what she is looking for she was very clear with who she is looking for. She says in the beginning, it’s very much about looking, researching, seeing what is going on. Social media as well as print. Going into lots of exhibitions, graduate shows everything. You need to look at who is winning awards, who is getting a lot of press and air time. Well that's me out of the equation then. I would love my work up on walls but as I don't enter many competitions it is going to be very hard to actually be noticed. Im not overly sure my style would be the kind of thing she is looking for anyway. So there I am letting myself down before I even tried, same old story.
So I guess looking around in the net, there is a world of information about how each person feels you need to do to get yourself in a gallery. The number one answer is
1 - Pay for it. Well there is a surprise. It would be easy to grab my own exhibition, or pay someone to showcase my work. I can only dream of the day I get the phone call that someone wants me to tell a story.
2 - Be ready, have a body of work printed ready to hang for short notice stuff.
3 - Be socailly active. Do I have a social presence? No in short. I am far too busy to market myself, maybe thats half the problem. I need to shout it out there, I guess If don't no one will.
4 - Define Your Vision. Make work that only you can, be unique. This is one of the hardest things in photography, but defining your vision and style is one way to increase the likelihood that your work is noticed.
5 - Research If you are interested in having your work shown at a particular gallery, first do your research on that gallery and the people who run it. By showing real interest and ensuring that your work is a good fit, you’ll up your chances of getting exhibited there.
6 - A day at a time. Don’t expect anything to happen overnight.
7 - There seems to be a big shift going on right now about video presence. Something else to learn/ Maybe a collaboration is on the cards.
But then in all fairness do I want all the work involved? Probably not, at the age of 52 I don't have the energy to chase the dollar. I love what I do, but it is a very competitive market, I am seeing often that it helps if you know someone. So
8 - Network. I'm going through the steps in learning the things you need to do, but I don't mix in curator circles to get noticed, so I guess if I want to be seen I need to extend my networking.
Francesca personally collects people. She might not need you yet, but you can always spend some time in the drawer for that maybe one you are right for job. She said I like a PDF and an artist’s statement. I like to see a project. I do like to see the website as well but I don’t like it when the website doesn’t have enough or it’s not coherent. I’d much rather if an artist says this is one project and this is what I want you to look at, this is the breadth of it. But PDFs are nice because I can print and if I like something I can put it in a folder.
So when I get some time, maybe over the break, I am going to work on a PDF, work o getting more of my work on my website and then send it off. who knows, ONE DAY!
It was interesting to see her view on editions and collections as most of my work up until this course has been individual.
Cecil Beaton -– Determined to be published Cecil’s nanny owned a camera and taught him the basics of photography and how to develop film. His sisters and mother sat for him, and he sent the pictures off to London society magazines. Usually in his cover letter he would pretend to be an agent who was recommending this wonderful new talent of Cecil Beaton. He was known as a photographer who wasn’t actually technically top class, but nevertheless had an eye for staging a photograph compellingly. So I feel I am following in his footsteps, I love to stage photographs and as Cecil's career blossomed he did less and less staging, a little like my self in this last module.
A new book to get through.
BEATON, C. (2015). Beaton - photographs.
