Ever walked into a gallery and known in ten seconds it was wrong? What gave it away?
I do a lot of walk-ins before I ever email. There was one place in the north of Greece, gorgeous space, good light, and I knew in about ten minutes I'd never want my work there. Not because of anything they said. It was the way they talked about their artists. "My painter," "my sculptor," like they owned them. Every artist was a possession. I thanked them and left.
But I've also walked into a scruffy little basement space and felt right at home instantly. You can't always tell from the outside.
What's the fastest you've ever ruled a gallery out, and what was the tell? Or the opposite, the one that looked wrong on paper and turned out to be exactly right?
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The "my artist" thing would do it for me too, yeah. It's that ownership language. I've walked into places where they've got your work up and they talk about you like you're a nice piece of furniture they've acquired. You can hear it in the first two minutes.
Mine was a place here in Galway years back, before I knew any better. Gorgeous little room, proper lighting, the works. And the woman running it spent the whole time telling me how lucky I'd be to hang alongside her more established names. Not in a nasty way, just... very sure of the pecking order. I remember thinking, sure I'll be grand, I'll keep my prints under the bed before I let someone talk down to me from that height. Never went back.
The opposite was a fella who ran a stall at a market, no gallery at all, just a trestle table and a good eye. He asked me about my process. Not what I charged, not how many I could shift. Asked what I was carving and why I kept coming back to the same hare. That's the whole game in one question. I've had my work in proper galleries since but I still think about that fella's table. It's not the walls, it's who's standing inside them.
The pecking order thing is real and it's subtler than the ownership language. It can sound almost kind, like they're doing you a favour by letting you in the room. But you walk out and realise they've already decided your place before you ever said a word about your work.
Galway though, I have to ask. Is the art scene there as small as everyone says? I've heard half the galleries know each other's clients by first name.