You created a professional portfolio of your work and have a nice, well-prepared CV to compliment it in your application. But what now?! Before going into anything tactical, I want to talk perspective:

You can always send an email or cold call, but this has a similar effect as some guy calling you in the middle of your lunch, asking if you’re satisfied with your cell provider — it surprisingly still works sometimes, but neither party is really excited about it.

I have done quite a few cold approaches and, speaking form personal experience, they don’t seem to get a lot done; when I started out, I did manage to get a few appointments with some head gallerists and a chance to show them my work, but there was absolutely no prior connection or interaction to fall back upon when discussing my work and as such no genuine trust or even inkling of it could have been established regarding what I had to offer to the gallery.

I tend to talk a lot about reputation and building up your connection base, and this is where having one begins to really work in your favour; sitting in front of a complete stranger with the seat at the table afforded only due to a few digital images of your previous work and some text, describing how great you are, isn’t going to seal a deal — at least not in any situation I had found myself over the years — it might be different in places, where the art market is stronger evolved.

But had I practiced what I preach now (most my gallery searches were done 5 years ago, when I was a fresh-baked art graduate), I would’ve had a much easier time getting my work across; the point is to build a network before you approach any gallery or agent.

It’s like any other business really: you don’t start selling T-shirts just by having a webpage with a few designs and then expecting the money to just come in. From distribution channels, resellers, advertisers and down to a reputation of having a quality product — everything has to click in order to start living off you business, and art is no exception.

But our distribution channels in this example are the people we know, that are connected with those that we wish to be introduced to; they are the resellers of our message, our advertisers — without a good standing with them and a lot of hard work to back our claim, we have nothing at all.