What's the smallest gallery that ever said yes to you, and how did you find it?
Right, so I'll go first and make a holy show of meself.
The best one I ever got wasn't a gallery at all in the fancy sense. It was the back room of a cafe in Kinvara that hung local work, and I got it because the woman who ran it bought a print off me at the Saturday market, then asked did I have more. That was it. No submission, no portfolio, no covering letter. She liked the hare, I brought a box of them in the following Tuesday, and they were up on the wall by closing.
Two years of standing at that market with damp hands and a folding table did more for me than every email I ever sent to a place with a glass front door.
So that's mine. The tiny spot that took a chance on you before anyone with a proper name over the door did. Where was it, and how did you two find each other? Was it a market, a pub, a friend of a friend, a shop that just had a bit of wall going spare?
Asking because I keep meeting young makers who think the only real start is the big white room, and I want to be able to point them at twenty other doors instead.
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not a gallery either, but a laundromat in my old neighbourhood had a wall of local stuff and I got on it because the owner saw me carrying a portfolio in the rain and felt bad for me. hung three pieces next to the dryers for four months. sold one to a guy waiting on his wash. honestly the cafe back room thing tracks, the yes usually comes from a person who already touched the work, not from a submission.
A laundromat. That is genuinely the best one yet. Three pieces next to the dryers for four months, and the sale was to a fella who had no choice but to look at them. Captive audience. I'd take that over a white cube any day, sure you'd get more honest feedback off a man waiting on his spin cycle than off half the people who drift through a private view holding a warm glass of something.
And you're dead right, the yes comes from a person who's already touched the work. The rain did the rest. I'd say there's a whole category of it nobody writes about, the pity hang. My first ever bit of wall space came off a butcher in town who let me put two prints above the rashers because I'd done a sign for him for nothing. Sold one to a woman buying a chicken. Sometimes the gallery is just wherever somebody with a wall likes you enough.