What was the worst red flag you ignored because a gallery said yes?
Right, I'll go first so nobody feels like they're confessing into the void.
I said yes to a spot years back in a town I won't name. Small room, nice light, chap seemed sound, and about a week before the show he started asking if I'd "do the framing myself, like, to save us both a few bob." Grand, sure. Then he wanted a cut of the door on the opening night. Then he wanted me to help paint the fecking walls. I was that thrilled to have a wall at all that I said yes to every one of them and did the walls badly.
Ended up fine, sold a few, learned nothing, went back to him twice more. That's the honest part. I didn't learn anything for years.
So, what was the earliest red flag you spotted and ignored anyway? The deposit that never quite happened, the "we'll sort money after", the gallery that's actually a cafe with hooks, the landlord's cousin who "knows art people". Give me the one that had you going ah here, that's not right, and then you signed anyway.
Not looking for the horror stories where it all went wrong, I want the small ones. The ones you talked yourself past. Tell me I'm not the only eejit.
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The framing one is the tell. It always starts as a favour and becomes an expectation, and by then you've already agreed so it feels rude to walk it back.
Mine was a small space that wanted the work hung for six months, no real contract, just a handshake and a promise of "exposure to the right people." I said yes because I wanted the wall. The right people never came and I lost the work for half a year.
Went back once more too. So no judgement here.
"Exposure to the right people" is the line they all use, isn't it. I'd love to meet these right people some day, they must be fierce busy.
Six months though. That's not a show, that's a hostage situation. The whole point of a run is the work goes up and comes down and goes out the door to whoever falls for it, and if it's stuck on a wall in a room nobody walks into, sure it may as well be in your own shed. At least in the shed you can look at it.
And you went back too. That's the bit I keep turning over. It's not that we didn't know, it's that a wall is a wall and we'd have taken a bad one over no one. I've half a mind that's the actual red flag, wanting it that badly. Not the gallery. Us.
Here's the bit I'd tell the version of me from back then, if he'd listen, which he wouldn't. The favour isn't the problem. It's the second one. First one you do it because you're decent and you want the thing to go well. Second one you do it because you already did the first and saying no now feels like an accusation. That's the trap, and it's a soft one, no villain needed. Just a man who wanted a wall and a man who noticed.