How we pulled off an art exhibition (a brief step-by-step guide)
Mine and Georgie McEwan’s duo show, ‘wanderings’, has now finished, a big thank you to all who made it down to South East London to visit Open205 Gallery in Deptford. We had a great time, the whole experience was incredibly fun and rewarding - from the organising, planning, making, curation and install. I would recommend holding a show with your friend, as you both know each others strengths and weaknesses, meaning that you can divvy out tasks, knowing who will complete them better, for example Georgie is a pro at all things Adobe and design, so she created our exhibition poster and marketing merchandise, whereas I’m quite partial to a list, logistics, communication and marketing, which were the tasks I handled.
As mentioned in a previous blog post, the catalyst for this exhibition was a shared feeling of frustration from a flurry of recent rejections in early 2024, from open calls, awards, galleries, etc. As an artist, be it writer, painter, ceramist, or musician, rejections happen often and are essential for growth - I tell myself this through gritted teeth - but when you spend precious time completing an application you feel so passionately about and get rejected, it is, of course, going to make you feel deflated, jaded and like a failure (but I promise you this, you are not). What lifts me up when I feel like this is talking to other artist friends, whether that’s online or IRL, voice your frustrations because they’re in the exact same boat. Once you’ve finished venting and being negative, find a positive solution. Ours was hold our own exhibition - and the rest is history!
We started planning our exhibition in February/March time, working out how much we wanted to spend overall (we didn’t have a large budget but made what we had work) as well as scheduling out potential dates in the diary to hold the show. We decided on mid September, giving us enough time to create the work, organise the opening, and design merchandise. Autumn is ‘back to school’ time, everyone is back from summer holidays, ready to fill up their calendars, London is buzzing with art fairs and design festivals (PAD and Frieze in October, London Design Festival in September) so is generally an exciting social season, just make sure your private view doesn’t clash with other big event opening nights.
After setting the approximate dates we started our search for the perfect sized and priced venue (in London this is quite a task) I’ve included some helpful links below. However, Georgie found our little space on instagram, so keep your eyes peeled when scrolling. Open Gallery was the perfect size - not too big a space to fill, and not too small, we both had plenty of room. If anyone is looking for a space to hire, I’d really recommend this gallery, the staff were friendly, accommodating, and were practical and knowledgable when installing artworks.
Once the space was booked, the next step was the most exciting, but strangely one of the hardest tasks. What to name our duo show?! We had numerous working coffee and pub dates to discuss, but most of the time ended up nattering away about other things. Finally, Georgie came up with the brilliant name, wanderings, which suits both our works and practices to a T. Now for the fun (and most important) part, going back to our respective studios to produce the work we would exhibit. Flash forward August 2024, works finished (just about) it was time to order merchandise; postcards, work list leaflets, business cards, window vinyl, and to start on social media promotion. I’d recommend spending a weekend a month before your show researching media platforms to contact, as well as industry professionals. Once you have a list of media platforms, curators, galleries, artists you want to connect with, go forth and send those beautifully eloquent, enticing email invites, making sure to attach a succinct press release and a few images. Tip, keep it informative, concise, not word heavy or fluffy, and no more than three images long. Don’t forget to include your eye catching and unique exhibition poster!
A few weeks before the show opening, after sending out the show invites, press releases and a ton of instagram posts promoting the event. Now is the time to organise the drinks sponsor, so send out more polite emails to drink companies. We were extremely lucky as Five Points Brewery were a local company to us, that often sponsor similar events, they also had a big batch of pale ale that were dated wrong so had lots to give away. Like I said, extremely lucky!
Our final task to navigate was the install day, we met at the brewery to pick up the drinks, took an uber to the studio, picked up the works and on to the gallery. After a slightly stressful morning, ironing out a few hiccups, the last hours of installation went smoothly and we finished in the nick of time, or just enough time to calm our pre private view nerves with a G&T. Music on, outfit change, lippy applied and we were good to go.
If there’s anything specific you’d like to know, or have any other questions let me know. Useful links below, along with images from the exhibition. Overall it was a wonderful experience, we learnt a lot and now have an array of knowledge to help us in the future, which we’ll need for our solo shows in the not so distant future.
Appear Hear also have good options
Open205 Deptford - gallery
Printed.com - A6 postcards
trilogy printing - works list
print 2 media - window vinyl
Five Points Brewery - drinks sponsor
Media platforms to contact:
Useful reading -
‘Navigating the Art World’ by Delphian Gallery
Useful links -
