Do you email galleries or just walk in?
i've been going back and forth on this. i've had some luck emailing but they usually take months to answer if they do. then last year i dropped by a small space on a whim just to look, mentioned i make work, and the owner actually asked to see my portfolio right there. nothing came of it but the fact that she even looked.
i feel like walking in is such an old-fashioned move now but it's the only time i've gotten a real response. am i missing something? do you all just email and wait, or are people showing up in person still?
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Ah sure, walk in. That's the one. I think the galleries here have the same problem you do, their inbox is a swamp of JPEGs from people who've never set foot in the place, and they haven't a notion who's real and who's a name on a screen. But you stand in front of them with your hands smelling of ink and you're a person, not an attachment.
I've had work hung off the back of a pint and a bit of chat, no joke. A small space down near the docks, I went in to look at a fella's lino, got talking to the woman running it, and six months later I'm in a group show. Emails I've sent that got answered three weeks after the exhibition was over. "So sorry, we'd love to see your work, are you free Thursday?" and I'm thinking, sure I was free last year.
The trick is reading the room though. You can't go in with a folder under your arm like a man selling encyclopedias. You go in to actually look, have the chat, let it come up natural. If the owner's in the middle of hanging a show or dealing with a customer, you leave it. That's the mistake people make, they're so desperate to be seen they can't see the room.
Stick with the walking. Email's grand for the follow-up after, but the first hello is a foot in the door job.
That pint story is the whole thing, isn't it. Nobody's ever hung my work off a decent email.
I've done both for thirty-odd years and the truth is most galleries are run by people who like people more than they like their inbox. Walking in says you think the work matters enough to carry it somewhere. Email says you've got thirty other places you're sending the same file to, and they can feel it.
The one thing I'd add: walking in works best when you're not there to sell. Go to look. If the conversation happens, it happens. The minute you come in with your portfolio under your arm like a warrant, they can smell the desperation through the door and rightly so.
the walking in not to sell part, yeah. that's the bit that took me the longest to get. first few times i went in somewhere i was so obviously in sales mode they could probably smell it from the doorway.
the pint thing is funny though, it's not even about the pint. it's that she remembered he was a person who drinks pints, not a folder of jpegs. thirty years of that and i bet you've walked into places that ended up being nothing and still worth it, right? just for the practice of being seen.
the pint story. god. that's the thing i keep circling, it's never about the work at that stage, it's about them remembering you're human. i walked into that space last year and the owner looked at my hands before she looked at me. that's the difference, isn't it. no amount of email formatting gets you that.
docks space sounds like exactly the kind of place that'd say yes. i keep meaning to just... pick a day, walk around with a folder, see what happens. maybe that's the whole move and i've been overthinking it.