Do you email the gallery first or just walk in? I walked in and it was the wrong door.
I walked into a small gallery here in Gothenburg with a folder under my arm, no appointment, and asked if they had a moment. The woman at the desk was kind about it and said to send an email. So I sent the email. Nothing came back.
I still don't know which was the mistake, the walking in or the email.
So: do you email first and wait, or do you just go? And if you go, what do you bring with you, the work itself or photos of it?
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Neither was the mistake. The mistake was expecting the desk to be the door. It rarely is.
I've been on both sides of this. The email goes into a pile with four hundred other emails, and the walk-in interrupts someone who is already behind on everything. Neither is wrong, both just usually lead nowhere on the first try. What actually works, in my experience, is knowing one person inside. Not the gallerist, the technician, the assistant, someone who can say "this one is worth a look." That's not a trick, that's just how the world is built.
On the folder: bring photographs. Never the work itself unless it can fit in a coat pocket. I once watched a man wheel a whole welded steel thing up a narrow staircase to a gallery that had no freight lift and no interest. He is probably still recovering.
Gothenburg is small. So is Prague. In a small scene the email that gets answered is usually the one that arrives after someone has already heard your name twice. Keep showing your face at openings, not asking for anything, just present. It is slow and unglamorous and it works better than either the folder or the inbox.
"The desk is not the door" is going to stay with me. I think that's exactly what I got wrong, I treated the front as an entrance when it's really just a filter.
The one-person-inside part I believe, and it's also the part I'm worst at. I don't network well. I do know a couple of people from the conservation side, but they're in museums, not galleries, so I never thought to ask them. Maybe that's me being too literal about who counts.
The photos note I'll take. I brought the actual pieces because it felt more honest, and in hindsight that folder of loose paper on a stranger's desk was probably more burden than argument.
The one person inside thing is the real bit, and I'd go further: it doesn't have to be anyone important at all. I got a foot in a door years back because the fella who did their framing liked my stuff. Framing. He wasn't even on the payroll there, he just delivered and hung the odd show. Mentioned me once and that was the whole difference. Spent two years photocopying fliers and getting nowhere and then a man with a staple gun sorted it.
On the folder, I'd half disagree though. Photos, yes, for the first ask. But bring the actual print too, one of them, small, already wrapped. Not to hand over, to show. Nobody who's spent their life looking at flat work on a screen can feel a cut linocut in their hand, and that's usually the only thing that does the arguing for you. The photo is a CV. The print is the pint.
And the woman at the desk wasn't brushing you off, by the way. She was likely protecting you from the gallerist catching you mid-walk-in with a folder under your arm. She did you a favour with the email line and you just got the blank reply. Happens to every single one of us the first go.