Market Project

Spotted by a Market Project member, a good example of bad practice: an “Open” exhibition in which artists pay £10 to submit their work for consideration, then they pay another £25 if they’re accepted. If you get chosen but fail to pay up promptly, you’ll be deselected.  No artist who wants to be taken seriously should get involved in these kinds of shady practices. Whether it’s on the taking money side or the giving money side, it marks you as a total amateur. Admittedly the sums of money involved are not as large as some we have seen, but the principles behind it are still all wrong:

• The organisers are not clear about what the money is for and what the artists are buying. They just vaguely say they are covering costs. What they are undertaking to do is also not clear. We presume they will hang or install the work, but they don’t say where or how, or how many artists are likely to be in the exhibition.
• It is not clear who (if anyone) will see the work, or how (and if) they will go about publicising it.
• They explicitly deny all duty of care for any art that comes into their possession.
• There is no explanation of who these people are, what their history is, why anyone should trust them (and pay them) to curate an exhibition, broker sales, etc. Where is their CV and their track record, apart from other similar shows in the same place?
• As always, it is not obvious what an artist would really gain from being in this exhibition. The organisers clearly gain £10 per entrant and up to £35 per participant.

Unfortunately this is only one example of many that constantly stream through the arts opportunity listings every week- perhaps it’s time for the organisers of these lists to be a bit more principled and discriminating, especially when these listing services and organisations have paying memberships themselves. Read the rest of this entry →