There’s a reciprocal relationship between art galleries and artists. Gallerists need art to sell and the artists gain someone who respects them and their work. Gallerists also install, market, sit the exhibition and (hopefully) sell the artists’ work, recommending it to their own network of collectors. 

The best gallerists are the ones who are good at building relationships, both with the artists and with the potential art collectors. They advocate for your work in an impartial way that can sometimes be difficult as the exhibiting artist to do.

Exhibition openings are an important way for people to get to know and appreciate the artists’ work. Experiencing the ‘buzz’ at an exhibition opening is part of the allure of the event. It’s when people can talk to and mingle with the artist while the gallerist deals with the ‘business’ of selling the works.

I’m a big fan of exhibition openings, both as an artist and as a buyer of art. I love supporting fellow artists who are exhibiting and feeling part of a community of people who appreciate art in all its many forms.

This week I received the official invitation for my upcoming exhibition Ice Stories: Dispatches from the Arctic which will be held at ArtPost Gallery in Uki. It’s a beautiful small gallery space in a busy rural post office and bespoke coffee roasting café. What makes this venue so special for an art exhibition is the amount of ordinary people who pass through its doors every day, either to transact with the post or meet friends to drink good coffee.

Feeling supported as an artist is really important to your own self esteem. There is often a long lead-up time from between when you make the artworks and are accepted to exhibit, to when the work is actually on exhibition. This can be anywhere between one and two years, by which time you might have moved on in your artistic practice and this work can seem a bit ‘old’ to you.

Yet the work holds the energy of its making. When installed it sings its own story, ready to meet its audience. The gallery holds it in its space, creating a nurturing environment for it to have its moment of glory. The artist may have ‘moved on’ but the work remains as a testament to the artist’s creative output, their time, skills and thought processes that birthed the art.

I’m excited to be showing work that I made nearly two years ago in Iceland. When I see the works on my studio table, all wrapped up and waiting to be hung, I know that they will come to life on the walls of this gallery. They will bring the world of melting ice and flooding rains to a tiny town in northern NSW. Only two weeks to go…