Group exhibition
My summary of what its like doing my first group show with two friends….
Last month’s blog was about my first solo exhibition, and this one is about my experience of doing my first group exhibition with two friends. That will complete my series of posts about being an early career artist doing exhibitions for the first time. Next month will be something new.
The three artists left to right: Pascale Steenkiste, Elisabeth Grant and Helen Feilden at Life in Colour, May 2024
The show Life in Colour took place at Nicolls in the west end of Glasgow UK in May 2024, and I showed my work alongside Pascale Steenkiste and Elisabeth Grant. Check out their work - it is gorgeous. We all have different styles but love colour - hence the title of the exhibition. We ran the exhibition as a pop-up event over 3 days. We had an opening event on the Friday evening and then opened from 10-4 over the weekend.
These are my thoughts about the exhibition:
I didn’t do much of the organising this time as there were three of us and the others dealt with the gallery and printer. That was great for me as it was so soon after my solo show, and I have my day job to keep on top of as well. Thanks so much to my friends for that!
The gallery space (Nicolls, Glasgow) was more homely than the gallery I hired for my Fireweed show. It was well suited to the sizes of paintings that were exhibited and good for showing how the paintings might look in someone’s house. The shop location was easier for people who were passing by to access and we had quite a lot of people from the local area dropping in for a nosey as well as people who we already knew visiting. Parking and public transport links were good. Also its a part of the city people like hanging out in to go for coffee, lunch or drinks. The parking was free and manageable which isn’t always the case in Glasgow depending on location. The gallery used a hanging system which I hadn’t experienced before. It was a bit fiddly to set up but easy to move things around during the weekend and very quick to uninstall everything at the end which was much appreciated.
We had a busy opening night, a steady stream of visitors on the Saturday and were consistently busy on the Sunday. We did well and made good sales of original paintings, prints and greetings cards over the weekend. I covered all my costs for the event including framing and materials for the paintings shown. I was more than happy with that! It was great to informally chat to people - including many who I was meeting for the first time - about my work and about being an artist. I learned lots from others about recommended art classes, galleries, printers and framers in the city as well which was a bonus.
Some things I want to take forward for the next time I do an exhibition - based on my solo and group experiences:
Visit the venue and imagine being various kinds of audience in terms of how to get there and ease of access. Also the choice of venue should be guided by the kind of work being shown. My series of large paintings required a different space than a collection of smaller unrelated works does for example. Check the lighting, dimensions and that the hanging system will suit you for install and de-install. How easy will it be to deliver your work to the venue? Is there anywhere to store things? Will you have WiFi access? Heating? Kitchen and bathroom facilities?
If working with others, making sure you allow enough preparation time to agree what you all want is aligned before deciding anything is a good idea. All decisions take longer when there are more people involved as well. I really enjoyed getting to know my friends better due to working together. We were all easy going and flexible about getting the show organised and presented the way we wanted which was great. I think that would have been difficult if we hadn’t aligned before agreeing to go ahead with it.
Doing shows is hard work but really rewarding, and I have discovered I love talking about my work and showing it off. I particularly enjoyed presenting my Fireweed series as a curated series of my latest work, but it was a lot more effort to deliver than doing the group show and I had to work to a deadline producing the work as well as organising the show by myself. I’m grateful to friends who volunteered to help me with the solo show. You know who you are - thank you!
Something unexpected always happens: expect the unexpected.
In future I will try to space out doing shows. I had a month between these two and I think for me as an artist who also has a full time job that is too close together. However, I’m very glad I went ahead and did it anyway. I think actually doing something that is not ideal is way better than not doing it at all! The main downside for me of having the shows so close together has been that I haven’t had any time in my studio during March-May this year, and that its taken me a bit of time to re-group my energy and get back into it after the second exhibition was finished.
Have you had experiences of organising your own art events? I’d love to hear about them if so.