A Trip Around Some London Art Shows

A few days ago I spent a good day visiting galleries in London. First up was Handmade in Britain, a small boutique gallery just off the top end of Brick Lane, where I took some of my ceramics to be displayed and sold. http://www.handmadeinbritain.co.uk/?p=368

I then headed west for the Lisson gallery near Marylebone Station which has two sites on opposite sides of Bell Street. I really liked the one featuring Haroon Mirza who's work is "concerned with the distinctions that define noise, sound and music" and uses old hi-fi, dico and computer equipment to make a racket.

Calder mobiles looked wonderful in the window of the Gagosian Gallery in Davies St, then I visited New Bond Street's Fine Art Society, Bruton Street's Halcyon Gallery (enormous place including Bob Dylan paintings and prints), and a big show of Lynn Chadwick sculptures- silly me, I always thought 'she' was that fairly rare thing- a female famous scultor, but it's a 'he' with an unusual name.
Coffee break at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street- if you haven't been there, do go and you'll see original equipment used in some really important scientific experiments by Farraday, Davy etc- and the coffe is good too.
Gallery Besson for a show of ceramics by the late Jaqueline Lerat  http://www.galeriebesson.co.uk/lerat2011.html

OK but not my cuppa tea.

Next stop the blockbuster show of Modern British Sculture at the Royal Academy. Imaginatively presented alongside historical influences, and without several big names, it worked extremely well. I thought the recreation of Passmore/Hamilton's room from a 1959 show at Newcastle University's Hatton Gallery was stunning (my in-laws were their students at that time).

A small video room showed short films- I liked Len Lye's Royal Mail film which you can see on YouTube, and Richard Wentworth's  Making Do and Getting By- photo's of things put to unusual uses by non-artists. My sort of images for sure.

In the evening I went to a teachers preview night at the National Gallery of Jan Gossaert, a relatively forgotten northern renaissance genius.

And what have you seen lately that you can recommend?

I am taking part in an exhibition of artists books/ sketchbooks

Monday 28th Feb saw the start of Safety Helmets Must Be Worn, a group show by MEET. Have a look at the website:
www.artistsmeet.org



My contribution is 3 little sketchbooks described below for the catalogue


CODEX 1-3


Starting on January 1st 2010 I did one drawing a day, and continued every day for the whole year in 3 tiny sketchbooks. This was not conceived as an artwork. I am a potter so some drawings reflect my work. I decided to display the books pegged together to form a circle suggesting the turning of the year. (What a shame that there are 360 degrees but 365 days to go around the year.)


Tiny windows that can be peered through:


Looking/seeing/transcribing/isolating/defining/choosing/recording


Finding common ground and themes


Trying out: ideas/materials/mark-making methods/re-learning to draw


Diary of fragments of my year- some appropriate to the season/special days/location at the time


My things/artefacts/interests/my people/myself


Pots: mine/my collection/ideas for new pottery work






My background. I have a First in 3-D Design from Loughborough College of Art & Design, but for many years drawing has been merely of the thumbnail/back-of-fag-packet (not that I smoke) type to generate basic ideas from which to make my objects in three dimensions. I have made somewhere in the region of 90,000 pots over 30 years, and my work is still very much alive and evolving.


I see drawing as an engine-house for the generation of new ideas, so this was the first time that I had made a promise to myself to draw for it’s own sake, and to do it relentlessly every day, no matter how little time I had, or how important or trivial the subject depicted. It became a habit and a discipline. It was a process of taking stock, and finding out for myself what I am interested in, and how I am able to record it. As an example, I am so pleased I took time to draw fair likenesses of my mum and dad, both in their late 80’s now.

You can see a range of pictures on http://www.facebook.com/richbax and look in the photo albums for “Selections from my One Drawing A Day project last year. All done in 3 tiny sketchbooks”, “One drawing a day”, and “recent pages from my one drawing a day sketchbook”.

Links to shopping sites

I have been asked to exchange links with several sites and this is probably the best place to do this for me.
First up is a portal for finding nice presents called My Shop Goods
 http://www.myshopgoods.com/

Well, that's that then

Merry Christmas to one and all. It is about 3.50 on Christmas Eve and I am about to shut up the studio and gallery for a few days. It has been an odd couple of weeks, with too much ice and snow diminishing the usual slow but welcome trickle of shoppers browsing for presents. I mustn't complain because those that did make it have chosen very nice pieces of my work (and Kate's) to give to their friends and relatives. I have been busily glazing porcelain during the final 2 weeks and have some really good work to display into the spring. I hope this doesn't make me too lazy in January- I know I have a bit more of the studio to decorate as well as repainting the areas where snow meltwater has seeped in, spoiling the recent redecoration. I have no idea if all the parcels I sent to customers arrived in time- some areas were said to be having serious delays. I hope that all is well and recipients love their gifts.

The curious world of Sale-Or-Return

I work in a strange field where it is customary for the seller of my work to have no financial commitment or risk. Artists and craft makers are very frequently only able to get their work accepted by galleries and craft retail shops on the basis of Sale-Or-Return i.e I have to pay to send by post or courier, or personally deliver a batch of my work to a retailer, and that retailer then shows the work to their public for a period of maybe 3 months. I have no idea if the work is all on show, or if some or all is away in storage. The arrangement is usuall that unsold work will be returned after the conclusion of the agrred period, but in practice this usually slips until I put in a request to have unsold items returned.
Most of these galleries take the same 50% + VAT of the sale price as the ones who buy the work in. There is little room for negotiation and if I want my work on display in as many places as possible, then that is the way it is.
I would love to know what other areas of trade have a similar system in place, so please let me know.

I can have a small group of pots in a gallery that would be worth say £300, sitting idle and this can be replicated by may 10 galleries at once- representing quite a large value.
However it is certainly not all doom and gloom- I am very happy and grateful to recieve cheques in the post for sales, and there is a great benefit to having the work doing it's job for me way beyond the local public who visit Old Leigh Studios where I make the pottery. If it was all here with me, it would possibly be doing  less good.

I hope this comes over as a short informative item rather than a rant, as this is the spirit in which it is intended.

Recent exhibitions

I went to the final day of the London College of Communication Photography MA show at Elephant & Castle to see the work by my friend Kelly Hill http://www.kellyhill.co.uk/   

Her work involves taking photos at night through windows of young people engaged in their everyday activities/games, and have a peculiar quality of silence and intimacy. Take a look on
www.map10.co.uk
There was plenty of other interesting work, but the nature of these shows is to only allow a fraction of the work to be exhibited. Also, MA's are about minutely investigating motives, actions, sources and theorising to death (my opinion only)which I think gets in the way of a damn good idea. The image is the important thing surely...the clue is in the term 'visual arts'

Can I make more money from my creativity?

As per my previous posting, I have been to a day's session in Southend Uni's Ilab thinktank, along with 11 other artists. We spent the day doing business studies stuff. I was impressed with the setting and the positive attitude of the hosts, but can't honestly say that I shall find it easy to become any richer on the back of the experience. We looked into 'businessy' things like:
'who sets the price- buyer or seller?'
'who is your ideal customer?'
'what benefits are you offering in your produce?' or 'what sets you apart?'
'what are your customer's requirements?'
'who are your enemies?' (who's the competition- a concept I find quite horrid, because other makers in my field and related fields help to make exhibitions and events more appealing to draw a larger audience, and I find that low attendance is the true enemy of both interest in, and sales of my work. You need a 'critical mass' of viewers to make it all work.

Now, what I would have liked to have discovered were better ways to: present my work,
light my work,
display my work,
approach galleries,
get an agent
etc.

So if anyone would like to run a day like that, why not get in touch with the Business Hub at Southend on Sea University and make an offer. Also please comment on what other areas you think would be of help in making more money from creative work.