Sussex Contemporary Open Call 2022

This exhibition was part of a competition which I entered. I managed to get my image selected for show although it did not win anything. However this was an interesting learning exercise:

ZERO SUM GAME

My main take away was that it is very difficult to make any money as an artist. I put my framed print up for £180, which was my estimate of the maximum I could really sell it for as an unknown photographer. It cost £140 to print and frame, and the gallery would have taken 30% if I had sold it – which would have left me down £14! Furthermore it took three trips down to Brighton to arrange the printing, deliver the picture and pick it up again – what with the parking and petrol a considerable loss!

What is more I negotiated a deal to get the print made and framed at that cost on the paper I wanted (an Ilford Baryta) from Colourstream in Brighton. My other quote from a local printer/framer (Pheasant Framing) recommended by a professional photographer who lives round the corner came in at £250, and that was not even on the paper I wanted as they did not stock that or anything directly comparable.

I discussed this with my local photographer friend and he said he was used to paying London prices for stuff so it was not surprising perhaps that shopping around was a good idea – in fact he took the number of the place I used. He also said that the only way to make photography pay as a job was to take commissions. Maybe this is different if you are very well known and represented, but otherwise “art” photography seems a dead end as a career choice. Of course that is not the only reason to photograph things.

RULES OF THE GAME

I was unsure whether to enter the competition as you had to pay £10 per entry with a max of three. I have in the past been advised against entering competitions that you have to pay for (with a few notable exceptions), e.g. in the talk by Anna Fox. As the theme was Sussex Food and Drink as pictured by Sussex Artists, however, it seemed uniquely suited to my final documentary project. However there was a challenge as to how tell the story I wanted. A single print did not really do this, nor did 3 really, and anyway it was not guaranteed that all 3 would be picked. In the end I chose to make a portfolio print – in a similar way to the portfolios exhibited at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

I stripped the image count down to 5 and worked out a collage using the WordPress tiled gallery function, using this as a guide in my Affinity post-processing software to create a picture in which each image was divided by thin black margins. I then created a mock-up of the print, framed edge-to-edge in black to echo the margins around in each photograph.

There were some disadvantages to this – it needed to be printed fairly big to do justice to each image, which meant I could not do it at home and so my costs would be higher. Also I felt it was less likely to sell – although as I felt my priority was the narrative I had to accept that. I hoped I would be able to sell individual prints but later found out the exhibition format did not allow that.

I also found out that most artists had been much broader in their interpretation of the brief – any image of Sussex seemed to do! The exhibition did not advertise the artist directly in any way – next to the print was simply a QR code that led to each artist’s page on a website and entry in the catalogue. This page gave a little more details about the print but the artist was not allowed to include information like website. Visitors could vote for a People’s Choice but only if they visited the exhibition.

MIXED MESSAGES

Interestingly I felt a little flat when seeing my print up. There had been quite a bit of work to get it to this stage and somehow the end did not seem to justify it. This was different to when I worked with the rest of the Thames Valley Group to produce an exhibition together, which was somehow much more rewarding.

I think this may have been an issue of control. For the i360 it felt like I was used as part of a process. From the organiser’s point of view this makes complete sense – things like the QR codes streamlined the process and made it trackable at each point – I have used them before myself – and I could see that adding the website would allow the artist to sell off the exhibition site and perhaps undercut it. Everything was designed to make the exhibition space an efficient point-of-sale.

OTHER WORK

The exhibition itself had 640 entries of which over 200 were chosen – so the odds of getting picked were good, although this also reduces any sense of success. Some of the other work was of a high standard, however – including an interesting print by Tim White from his series Saccadic Light inspired by the rapid eye movement between two points in a landscape – an attempt to capture a transitional state (by multiple or long exposure?) that gave a simplified, pictorial effect. There was a digital montage of an oak tree in mist by Mark Munroe-Preston printed on brushed aluminium that kept changing depending on how the light fell on it, which would have made it an interesting piece to own. Neither of these, however, had any direct reference to food or drink…

Over 11,000 people visited the exhibition in the two weeks that it was on, and about 25% of the works were sold (not mine sadly).

So a good, if expensive, learning opportunity for me as an “artist”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. https://www.thesussexcontemporary.co.uk/ (Accessed 28.10.2022)
2. https://www.timewhitefineart.com/all-prints/p/canvas-drip-/-2-of-6-edjkp-m3c27-hfwr8-6hs2t-5xxny-zsprr-af8j4-za3ml-e2c2x-t55rs-ntlyk-hgy5t-mp46p-kep72 (Accessed 28.10.2022)
3. https://treescapes.art/gallery/n50.9629-e0.0858.html (Accessed 28.10.2022)