I’m reading this great most recent book “How to Enter the Art World” by Hettie Judah and what I find most interesting is how much she writes about collectivity. I copied this entire chapter as I thought it was interesting and relates to the below Fill The Gap group exhibition I was able to paritcipate in after joining local Leytonstone Art Collective Creative Bloc or Bloccers. The group is quite low key, but steady, they show at least once a year, meet at a super old school cafe every monday, some of them are retired art teachers and lecturers, others retired people who never did art and decided to turn to it during retirement. And there are few people like me: desperate, overly keen, at the beginning of the road trying to establish themselves. As I was framing my paintings to be installed on the day of the exhibition they were still wet, as I delivered them to the gallery (a space, which belongs to tfl, which was once where the tfl workers used to have their art exhibitions), they were still wet, a week later, when I was taking them down, still wet…
Hettie Judah How to Enter The Art World (AFTER: a late start, a first career, illness, raising children, a crisis of confidence, leaving it in disgust…)
OTHER KINDS OF NETWORKING
Supportive Connections
There is a global ecosystem of artist associations. Among them are local groups and national groups.!° Some can be grand; others are punky upstarts. There are associations founded around a discipline or medium, such as the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic in the United States.
There are also organisations supporting specific groups, such as the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), founded by cultural theorist Stuart Hall, which works largely with British-based visual artists of Asian and African descent.
Some art schools have alumni associations – University of the Arts London has dozens, including four in mainland China.
Each performs in its own way and has its particular mission, but at base, these organisations are designed to support artists – to connect you to your fellows, to form a network within which to exchange information and to create opportunities for exhibition. Most associations were founded by artists. In 2013, Simon Carter and Robert Priseman founded Contemporary British Painting (CBP) to address a lack of serious engagement with the medium. Membership is by invitation only, but any painter can sign up to CBP’s newsletter, enter their annual prize or submit a work to be the Painting of the Day shared on Instagram. Nomination to CBP is based on a combination of merit and engagement. They want members to be involved with what they are doing as a group – submitting work, visiting exhibitions, participating in the wider conversation. I was one of the judges of the CBP Prize in 2022, and it was notable how familiar members were with one another’s work, and that of the artists nominated for the prize. As a volunteer-led group interested in generating opportunities for fellow members, CBP offers a model for a good artist network.
We all carry discreet snobberies. It’s easy to look at an artist association and feel it is not for us. That the members are too old or too young, too conservative or too radical, too numerous or too few, too chaotic or too rule-bound, that they are not like me and will not like me. Get over yourself and give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that you waste a membership fee and a few boring evenings.
You may find yourself surprised. Most associations will rec-ognise that their ongoing existence depends on evolving to meet the needs of new members. Change may be necessary, but the catalyst for that change can be you.
In Part 4 I want to keep moving away from the idea that networking is all about promoting your own work and self-interest. A good network is founded on bonds of mutual support and respect, on interest in other artists’ work and the investment of time and effort. That is the kind of networking offered by artist associations.
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Some of the work that captured me
