Life After Art School: Insights
On our quest to serve artists better and for artist to serve themselves better. We asked over 100 visual artists a bunch of questions about their perceptions on opportunities after leaving art school. Here’s a summary of what we learnt.
About our Audience
Over 100 artists completed our research questionnaire - 80% had or were in the process of completed their MFA. 70% having completed a BFA and all had at least a Foundations degree. When is came to gallery representation the picture resembles perhaps what is stereotypically assumed. 62% with no gallery representation, 22% with some form of representation (whether exclusively, specifically in a country). As seen in this data and the title of this report, the artists, our audience are as often categorised as ‘emerging’.
When exploring the average number of exhibitions artists were doing at this stage of their career. On an annual basis [figure 1] we see a classic bell-curve distribution - where the majority of artists were showing work between 1 - 4 times per year. 30% exhibiting work over 5 times per year and 11%, 7+ times per year. Of course there is no evidence that the more you exhibits, the higher probability of further opportunities, however; this does tell us that emerging artist, who want to show work more that 70% of their peers - should be taking on or creating at least 4 exhibiting opportunities per year.
“I don’t think they aren’t any barriers, it just takes time to know where your work belongs”
Figure 1. Average distribution of annual exhibitions
A comment we often hear from artists, is “galleries aren’t approaching me”. There are many types of opportunities that were identified to promote a practice to the wider public. Ranked in order of what artists first opportunity and what came after - our insights reveal that artist-run-exhibitions are the first. Similar to entrepreneurial artist Damian Hirst who organised his first show ‘Freeze’ in 1988 in the Surrey Docks in London with his Goldsmith peers.
Artist Run Exhibition then Group Show with a gallery - Solo Exhibition - Non-gallery show - Group show
Another learning. You need to earn your solo show. Just like you build a portfolio of work, you need to build a history of exhibitions and before a gallery will give you that much desired solo show.
Figure 2. How hard was it to find your first exhibiting opportunities?
What are the most common barriers, stopping you from exhibiting more?
The recurring perceived issued that came up over and over again where:
The financial cost of putting on an exhibition
The lack of a network
Not knowing pf available space to show work
The lack of relationships with galleries
As seen in Figure 2 above. The perception of the ‘level of difficulty’ for artists to find their first opportunities was very evenly spread from extremely difficult to easy I was approach and the higher end of the scale. Suggesting that - difficulty depends on the individual artist and their approach.
“Time, money and lack of knowledge about how the art world works at that level / imposter syndrome”
So we know, the perception of difficulty of finding opportunity, greatly varied based on the individual and many individuals will argue that it depends on the ‘type’ of opportunities.
In the second part of this report we asked our artist about a different type of opportunity. One that isn’t uncommon - exhibiting in a ‘non-gallery space’ AKA a workplace. Do artist rule this out entirely? Because it’s not a traditional art world outlet to develop credibility among their peers. The data tells us that 92% of artists positively responds to such a proposition and over 54% are extremely open to trying out alternative spaces to shows their work. Of course their of a number of factors to consider for all stakeholders, artist and the organisation that owns the space and the people using the space on a daily basis - To find out more about this, our full insights report is free and available to download below.
Summary for artists looking to do more than the majority (73%) of their peers
Set a threshold of exhibiting works at least 4 times per year.
Recognise that ‘artist-run shows’ contribute positively to your exhibiting history
Acknowledge that their are non-controllable variable which will make getting opportunities challenging, however focus on the things you can control.
Be open-minded to alternative ways to show work. AKA not in galleries.
Solo shows are on average the third exhibiting opportunity. Consistency in the number exhibition is key to more solo shows.