Today I want to share how I approach my gallery hunting; what helped me in the past and what didn’t and what I do, when focusing on getting representation. Do keep in mind that everybody has a different way of doing it — and while there are tried and tested methods that usually work, not everything ever does.

The goal is simple: get signed by a gallery.

The first thing is to asses the right gallery for your needs; it has to be close to where you are or somewhere, where you’re prepared to move/travel to, but preferably it’s local to your current situation — local is a broad term and depends on how flexible you are, for me it’s Central Europe, not Slovenia for example (it does have its drawbacks though, local talent can have better chances of getting in, but if you’re aiming abroad, you do have a foreign novelty factor in your pocket if you wish to play it).

It’s important to really take a day (or week, preferably) and study their history; what kind of exhibitions they have, whether they follow a certain pattern. For example, most publicly funded galleries in Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia) follow a more or less universal exhibition plan: 

A minimum of one academic professor a year, two or three international exhibitions (a mix of solo and groups) and the rest is local group exhibitions on whatever topic is relevant (and this is a broad area, ranging from climate change trends, the negative impact of social media to the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia), but almost never artists under 30. 

This is because they need to keep things fresh, but have to have their exhibitions perceived as grand and important in order to succeed in receiving their annual funding from the government. The point is: check if the gallery works with young talent (or new talent for that matter) and if they maybe exhibit for the sake of funding, not sales or other sources of income. This can immensely impact your ability to get anywhere and it’s really not the point of getting a gallery that doesn’t sell!

Try to get as much information on the people you are trying to reach; go online, search for their profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and all the other places they might be at. Get a feel for what they’re about and try to figure out what their motivations are.

Some will be guided purely by money, and in my opinion should be avoided — unless you yourself are too, but then again, maybe art isn’t the best place to be motivated by financial gains anyway? But that’s not to say that a good gallery owner doesn’t have their finances in mind at all times (they are running a business after all).

Others will be chasing certain topics, certain kinds of art; maybe they are specialising in a certain medium or have a constant client base of people, that search for certain art. They may cater to a certain age group — demographics are actually a good approximation of gauging people’s taste in art. For example, the majority of 50-80 year-olds in Slovenia (that like art) will usually like classical realism and impressionism and expressionism, but not abstraction or cubism.

Go to as many exhibition openings as you can — both from the targeted gallery and from others that form their network (this is where being local to the scene makes all the difference). A gallery owner has to be connected to the field and they usually attend each others openings and events (sometime as guest speakers, to do business … and sometimes just for the wine and cheese).

Get a few of other artist friends and just go. If you have no-one to go with, go solo; try to get a feel of who is part of the local art scene — you could search for people online or just go out and try to shake as many hands as you can. Remember, if you’re extroverted enough to be able to just enter a conversation full of strangers, you’re miles ahead of most of the other artists that are trying to get to where you want to but get anxious in public.

Know the value that you can bring to the table and get exceptional at presenting it. Because of the hard times small- and medium-sized galleries are going through right now (a lot are closing shop actually), some gallerists have started focusing more on new clients (millennials, Gen Z …) and may be actively searching for ways to approach them. If your art has that power and your personality matches it, you have a lot of leverage and value that you could provide them.

It’s a simple equation, really: 

They have 1) network 2) sales funnels 3) marketing and advertising 4) legal assistance and 5) a brick and mortar shop to exhibit art with technical assistance and insurance (hopefully) and I have 1) my art. 

If the equation looks like this, the only natural thing is to not go for me but pick someone else, that can get the value proposition on their side to at least try to match theirs — they are a business, not a charity.

Where we find our value proposition is absolutely dependant on how we produce our art, what kind of person we are … the whole package really. Regardless of what we do, we need to have one in order to get a conversation going and tomorrow I’ll go a bit more in-depth into the artist’s value proposition.