Exhibitions

When it comes to having my work shown to the public I have only done this a couple of times and it's an area I'd like to expand on. After my first year at College a friend and I exhibited some of our work from the year, and we were supported in the area by the Devon Artists Network. For a relatively small fee we were given gallery space for a week in Teignmouth South Devon, I chose to exhibit 5 images mainly about formalism and perspective and I made sure they were printed/mounted correctly to exhibition standard.
The only downside to holding the exhibition was the time of year, it pretty much rained for the whole week and it was at the wrong end of the Summer! Teignmouth is the sort of town to draw in tourists and we could have taken advantage of this, we could have made a better effort to promote the event, or even had an opening evening with wine and nibbles...next time.
More recently I have joined a local online gallery CYMK Digital Art and Photography run by Chris, a man who is very determined to make a success of his new venture by promoting and selling affordable art created by local talent.
Yesterday Chis hosted an open evening at Thirst in Plymouth, where the public were invited to view and buy any of the art on offer, I'm glad to say I got a few sales and was pleased with the feedback I received.
An image of the Mayflower steps on the Barbican which I produced on Monday was well received and I had a local man say 'you've made Plymouth look interesting!' This I took as a real compliment.
Chris intends to hold more events in the future, and the next will be at The Royal William Yard, TBA.
He also intends to open a shop at some point when his company is more grounded, and I hope to support him with this, it's just something I'm glad I got involved with. Although Chris has had submissions offered by a lot of artists, he is keen to keep the imagery in keeping with his site, however it's well worth contacting him and showing your work.
The only downside from the evening was the lighting; as the space wasn't a dedicated gallery with spotlighting, this didn't spoil the evening but if I'm honest it was the the only thing I could criticise.

Mayflower ©2012Matt Elliott

I look forward to taking part in more exhibitions in the future, and may even end up having one dedicated to my work...not just yet though.