{"id":9373,"date":"2015-03-31T18:35:52","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T18:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/?p=9373"},"modified":"2015-03-31T18:35:52","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T18:35:52","slug":"pop-up-galleries-help-artists-do-it-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/?p=9373","title":{"rendered":"Pop-up galleries help artists \u2018do it yourself\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walking through Centretown near\u00a0Bank Street\u00a0on a Saturday, you don\u2019t normally\u00a0find people huddled around paintings\u00a0under a\u00a0tent top. It\u2019s\u00a0rainy and\u00a0mid-October, but that doesn\u2019t discourage passersby from stopping to look at the art, displayed\u00a0on wood pallets in an empty parking lot.<\/p>\n

This one-day art-for-sale exhibition in an unconventional space represents\u00a0part of a new movement\u2014temporary\u00a0\u201cart galleries\u201d\u2014that has\u00a0swept\u00a0Ottawa and other cities\u00a0in recent years. Such\u00a0galleries are called pop-ups, and despite their impromptu nature, they seem to be\u00a0here to stay.\u00a0 Pop-up galleries have attracted artists from Toronto, Montreal, St. John\u2019s and other Canadian cities\u00a0who want to take sales into their own hands and show their work without help of traditional galleries. Often this is because galleries will take a cut of half the sales, and it\u2019s not always easy for emerging artists to sign with a gallery at all.<\/p>\n

\"Artist<\/a>
Artist\u00a0Cynthia M\u00fcnster displays\u00a0her work for sale at the Support Local\u00a0pop-up tent on Florence Street, October\u00a02014. [Photo \u00a9 Lesley LeRoux]<\/figcaption><\/figure>One\u00a0artist featured in the\u00a0October pop-up, organized by then-Somerset Ward candidate Martin Canning, says she was intimidated by the thought of bringing her work to a conventional gallery. As a photojournalist for iPolitics<\/em>, Cynthia M\u00fcnster says she paints more as a hobby and hasn\u2019t displayed her work much. \u201cI\u2019ve always been kind of shy about it,\u201d M\u00fcnster says. \u201cI\u2019ve shown in caf\u00e9s and in a tennis club, but I\u2019ve never actually approached galleries because I figure you have to have a more consistent body of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

M\u00fcnster got involved with the pop-up gallery through a former colleague who worked on Canning\u2019s campaign. Although pop-ups typically are indoor spaces leased\u00a0by the artists themselves, Canning and his team wanted to showcase local talent with a display\u00a0right on the street.\u00a0As part of local blog Apartment613\u2019s \u201cSupport Local\u201d month, they partnered with Antique Skate Shop to secure the empty parking lot next door for free.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we were hearing on the doorstep was a lot of people are expressing concern about opportunity within the artistic community to share their ideas, and also looking for a space to create,\u201d Canning says. \u201cThere\u2019s this particular niche of visual artists that contribute to the creativity and local aesthetic that needs to be celebrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratizing the sale of art<\/h2>\n

Across the pond, London has been churning out pop-ups for several years now, with support from ventures like Pop Up Gallery, which launched in 2010 to help emerging artists find vacant spaces around the city to exhibit their work. According to Diane Cardwell in a 2009 report for The New York Times<\/em>, New York City started to see more storefront pop-ups\u00a0as the recession pushed commercial landlords to seek new ways to\u00a0rent out unoccupied spaces. Eventually, Canadian artists like Bill Rose of\u00a0St. John\u2019s\u00a0began to take advantage of this phenomenon. In 2012, after severing ties with the gallery that had represented him, Rose\u00a0created the\u00a0pop-up\u00a0movement ARTocracy with the help of his agent, Peter Coombs. The name\u00a0apparently\u00a0refers to the democratization of opportunity for\u00a0artists who seek to sell\u00a0their work outside the gallery system.<\/p>\n

\u201cSelling the work is important, but so is promoting your work,\u201d Rose says. \u201cThe last gallery I was with had 50 people they were representing, and I didn\u2019t think that they really had enough staff to represent everybody properly.\u201d With this in mind, Rose and his agent took representation on themselves and have hosted five ARTocracy pop-up galleries in a hotel in St. John\u2019s, with another planned for May.<\/p>\n

\u2018I would like to see more people do it. Get your stuff out there.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2013 Ottawa artist\u00a0Alison Fowler<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As for Ottawa, pop-ups have been around for three years now. A group, Pop-Up Gallery Ottawa, was formed in 2012 and has been running events\u00a0every December\u00a0just before the holidays. It began when\u00a0artists Katherine Jeans, Andrew King and Alison Fowler, being\u00a0no longer\u00a0represented by galleries,\u00a0decided to plan an exhibition themselves. They held their\u00a0first pop-up in an\u00a0unoccupied house in Westboro.<\/p>\n

\"Alison<\/a>
Alison Fowler, co-founder of Pop-Up Gallery Ottawa, at her studio with\u00a0her poppy painting All That We Perceive<\/i>. [Photo \u00a9 Lesley LeRoux]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Fowler, a full-time artist with a studio in the area, explains\u00a0the method to planning a pop-up. First, their group picks an area where they want to hold the event\u2014typically around Wellington Street West, which draws a community of art buyers\u2014and looks for unused indoor spaces. \u201cI do find that people are very curious about, \u2018Where are you going to go next?\u2019\u201d Fowler says. \u201cSo it\u2019s almost like a little bit of a vibe that you\u2019re creating, especially in the art world. You want people to keep guessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group targets locations that have been up for rent for a while and pitch the pop-up\u00a0idea to the real estate agent at the last minute, a month before the event. Fowler calls this process a gamble, but says it\u2019s the only way they can get a space for a few weeks at a decent price without signing a year-long lease.<\/p>\n

This past December, Fowler, King and architectural landscape artist Eryn O\u2019Neill held the pop-up\u00a0in a street-level retail space on Richmond Road. Among\u00a0the three artists, they sold 37 paintings\u2014a result\u00a0that Fowler says they were happy with. She says they were thrilled this time\u00a0to find a building owner who gave them the space for free for two weeks. As a result, their only overhead costs\u00a0were in\u00a0buying refreshments and renting tables and glasses\u00a0for the opening night. Typically, Fowler says, a space can cost several thousand dollars: last year, the artists spent $4,000 plus tax\u00a0for one month for\u00a0the Westboro retail space that now houses the Kardish health food store.<\/p>\n

\u2018The time is right because of social media.\u2019 \u2013 ARTocracy co-founder Bill Rose<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While organizing a\u00a0pop-up\u00a0takes some negotiating savvy to secure a location (not to mention the initial hunt to find one), artists must\u00a0swallow other costs traditional galleries\u00a0take care of, such as food and drink for the opening reception. Fowler recommends that\u00a0artists band together in a group of at least four to six,\u00a0to divide the\u00a0costs\u00a0and attract a greater range of visitors if each artist has her\/<\/span>his own following. \u201cI would love to see more people do it:\u00a0like, get your stuff out there. The more exposure, the better. Just don\u2019t be cheesy or cheap about it,\u201d she\u00a0says. \u201cIf you see a spot or space or anything, just ask. Even if it\u2019s a restaurant or a clothing store or something, the worst thing that could happen is they\u2019ll say no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Power to the people<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ward candidate Martin Canning (left<\/em>, with volunteer Bailey Reid, centre<\/em>)\u00a0at\u00a0the\u00a0Support Local pop-up to showcase Ottawa talent. [Photo \u00a9 Lesley LeRoux]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Rose and Fowler agree that social media sites like Twitter help get the word out, contributing to pop-ups\u2019\u00a0success in recent years. \u201cI think the time is right for it now because of social media,\u201d Rose says. \u201cI think there\u2019s been a revolution, and it\u2019s because of the digital age that we can promote our work every day on Facebook and constantly build a brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

These factors\u00a0contribute to a culture that allows pop-up galleries to thrive, particularly in a pop-up\u2019s\u00a0first few days, when, Fowler says, most of the sales happen. Therefore, she maintains, even short-term pop-ups, like the one that ward candidate\u00a0Canning arranged\u00a0for the\u00a0Saturday afternoon in October, hold\u00a0potential to be of\u00a0real help to\u00a0emerging artists.<\/p>\n

One volunteer\u00a0with\u00a0Canning that\u00a0day, Bailey Reid, says pop-ups\u00a0give people a chance to re-imagine public space. The otherwise vacant gravel lot that they\u00a0used\u00a0was made vibrant for four hours, attracting\u00a0potential art buyers. \u201cToday, for us to do this was really pretty easy, and there\u2019s lots of spaces in Ottawa where pop-up stuff can happen,\u201d Reid said amid\u00a0the small crowd surrounding the pop-up tent. \u201cI think pop-up anything is a cool opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Painters and other visual artists need public venues, to show their work. But if a mainstream gallery remains beyond reach? Create your own temporary space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":9529,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9373"}],"version-history":[{"count":138,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10508,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9373\/revisions\/10508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}