What did your first gallery actually see? Mine was a print they could have bought anywhere

Something I keep turning over: my first gallery never saw my best work. They saw a small edition I'd made almost as a joke, printed badly on purpose, and that's what they wanted. For years I read it as a fluke, or as them not understanding the rest. Now I think they saw the one piece where I wasn't trying to be clever.

So I want to know what piece of yours actually opened the door. Not the body of work you're proudest of, the one that did the work. Was it the thing you'd have picked? Or did someone else see something in the piece you almost threw out?

I'll go first properly: mine was a two-colour screenprint, 40 copies, one of which is still stuck to my studio wall with tape because I never got around to framing it.

Tell me yours. Especially if it wasn't the one you'd have chosen.

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Teddy Lin·1w

the badly-printed joke piece being the one that got in is honestly the least surprising part of this. the stuff i make when i'm not trying to be smart is always the stuff people respond to, and it's annoying every time.

mine was a 12x12 study i made in like an hour, just to test a color combo before committing to the real canvas. gallery saw it stacked against the wall, not even stretched, and wanted that one. the big "real" painting it was a study for sat in the corner for a year. i still don't fully know what they saw but i've stopped arguing with it.

Teddy Lin·1w

the unstretched one hitting is the detail i keep chewing on. a raw canvas against the wall reads as process, as "this person is in it," and the stretched version reads as product. gallery people are basically shopping for the person, not the object, and the study is where the person leaks out.

i had the same thing with a color test where i mixed like six greens in a strip to check them against each other and a guy wanted to buy the strip. the actual painting it was for, shrug. i've stopped fighting it too but i still make the "real" one first, which is probably the problem lol.

Giulia BrunoOP·1w

The strip of six greens. That's the whole argument in one object, isn't it. You were only trying to see whether they agreed with each other, and the seeing is the thing. The painting afterwards is you performing that you already knew.

And yes, the "real" one first. I do it too. I think there's a superstition in it, like if I make the serious thing first I've earned the right to the accident. Which is backwards, because the accident is the only part that couldn't have been made by anyone.

What I keep circling: gallery people shopping for the person. That's generous and slightly brutal. Generous because it means they want a mind, brutal because it means the object is almost incidental. So the study reads as evidence, the finished piece reads as a claim. Evidence is harder to fake.

Do you ever show the strip now? Or is it still just the thing you made on the way to something else.

Giulia BrunoOP·1w

The unstretched thing against the wall, though. That's the part I keep coming back to. You spent an hour on it and it never got the ceremony, no frame, no wall, and that's exactly what let them see it. I have a whole theory about this that I won't bore you with, but there's something in how a finished piece asks to be judged and a test asks to be looked at. Different muscles in the viewer.

And yes, the annoyance is real. There's a version of you that's smarter than the piece they picked, and you have to just live with the fact that nobody wanted that one. I've made peace with it badly, on and off.

What I want to know is whether you kept making the hour-long studies after that, or started finishing them on purpose. Because I tried doing it on purpose and it killed whatever was in them.

Niall Doherty·1w

Ha, the piece you almost threw out. That's usually the one, isn't it.

Mine was a hare. I know, I know, the hare again, the dog is sick of looking at it. But this was an early one, and it was a disaster of a print. I'd misregistered the block, the black went down patchy, and there was a great smear across the bottom right where I'd leaned on the paper with an inky hand. I shoved it in a drawer meaning to bin it. Brought it to a market in the rain a fortnight later mostly because I'd nothing else dry, and a woman from a small space in town picked it up and said the smear looked like weather. Bought it off me there and then, and that was the start of the whole gallery thing. I'd have picked any of the clean ones. She saw the one that looked like the west of Ireland having a bad day. Still don't fully know what she was on about but she wasn't wrong.

Your read on it is the bit I'd argue with slightly. I don't think they saw you not being clever. I think they saw you not performing, and there's a difference, and it's a hard one to get back once you've noticed it. I've spent the last few years trying to carve like I don't know anyone's going to look at it. Harder than it sounds when you've a market stall on a Saturday.

Giulia BrunoOP·1w

The smear looked like weather. God, that's the whole thing, isn't it. She didn't see a mistake, she saw a decision you hadn't made yet. Which is maybe what a good gallerist actually is, someone who reads the accident as intention before you've caught up to it.

And the misregistration, the patchy black, you know in etching we'd spend a week trying to fake that. There's a whole tradition of it, the deliberate flaw as proof of the hand. You had it by accident and tried to hide it. I do think there's something in this, that the market and the gallery both have an appetite for the mark that escapes the maker's control, and we spend years learning control just to give it up in the one piece we didn't mean to make.

The dog will forgive you. Eventually.