#but you would think an artist offering commissions would have some sort of presence somewhere online

[yansurnummu]

hmm. has anyone else gotten an ao3 comment lately offering to do an art commission based on their fic?

I really can't tell if this is a real person or another weird bot

[bringbackwendellvaughn]

hi hello, i realize im like 2 years late so if your hype has already died out feel free to ignore this ask BUT if not, i really loved your Tbolts character analysis and justifications for a new team and I'd love to hear more about your fanon run? Please and thank you!

Oh thanks :D

I’ve been super-busy with my job as a teacher and it’s been a nightmare this year and I’ve not been able to afford to commission any covers for a long while. And its a shame because I have loads of Thunderbolts stuff, they were the first one I ever started thinking of fanon for.

I don’t have my file with me right now but I can remember some stuff...

I know one of my main directions for the team as a whole was to try and get them out of the more Suicide Squad-y set-ups they had been receiving since Nicieza left. I love Jeff Parker and his run, but I did want to get back to them being an actual super-hero team - a bunch of people who would show up alongside the Avengers and X-Men and FF and whoever during big Crisis events. I would maintain a link to The Raft prison but I would have them based out of their own headquarters somewhere else. I think back at Thunderbolts Mountain was what I went with. The Raft would still be explored a lot in the series and we’d get a look at a lot of other villains through that. I was always finding excuses to remind people Grizzly was technically once one of the Thunderbolts. In fact, with the Raft, there is a running joke I had thought of where whenever they are at The Raft (handing over a prisoner or whatever), the minor character Skeleton Ki - who featured on the Giant-Size cover - he is meant to be this master escape artist who can open any door so my idea was he would be a prisoner at The Raft and whenever we are there it is always the case he was either constantly escaping from his cell or being escorted back to his cell after failing to get anywhere beyond that.

The first two issues were the team fighting Red Hulk. Red Hulk had invaded a fictional country and was killing dictators so the Thunderbolts go to stop him before he ends up causing any more of a major international incident. This was also a nod-nod-wink-wink to Red Hulk stealing the Thunderbolts book all those years ago. I was likely going to blindly alter Red Hulk so that it wasn’t ever General Ross, over time my rules became looser and looser about what is and isn’t canon so one day I decided “it’s an alternative fanon, Red Hulk can always just have been Ross’ young protege that they later introduced in Parker’s run”.

The second issue cover was a homage (all the second issue covers would have a “homage” cover but usually not of the usual culprits) and it would have been a homage to Thunderbolts Prelude, a one-shot from 1997 reprinting the Hulk issue they debuted in. The new cover would swap Hulk for Red Hulk and Atlas for Man-KillerAmazon.

And she would also vanish after getting her arse kicked by Rulk. She would have gone her usual route of cut and running. She will be back and before she does come back, she would make a very brief appearance on Whirlwind’s Lethal Legion which attack the Pyms on their second honeymoon in my Avengers fanon (a group mostly made up of Pym enemies or Pym particle users). She would again cut and run from that group.  Amazon would return issue 6/7. She would show up again at the Thunderbolts headquarters one day and this would be a big character thing for her, it’s hard to explain but it’d be like her returning is her first active step towards something better. Although maybe she only came back out of fear? Maybe because she had nowhere else to go? Amazon was one of the character’s I was most enthusiastic about, I love that there is this super-strong (one-time but now full-time) giantess with this really understated character arc from Nicieza’s run and some history with a lot of the team.

Songbird would be the team leader, I can’t remember how much I posted before, but she would be no area for debate about who is leading the team. It’s Songbird. It’s Songbird’s team. It always should have been Songbird’s team for a while now and other people - Zemo, Osborn, the Avengers - have held it from her. The Avengers would come to better understand and appreciate the Thunderbolts this time around. Cap is pretty okay with Songbird and Abe, he believes in them, but he’d always be less convinced about the rest of the team so that is part of the way Diamondback gets brought onto the team. To forge a bridge between the two teams but it wouldn’t be the case she is acting as a spy or a mole or anything. She’s just there to let Steve and the Avengers know what’s up and help the Thunderbolts get some clearance here and there. And also because Steve wants Rachel there, he knows Rachel being around people like Songbird and Abe will benefit her and the Thunderbolts by showing that yes there is a chance to be accepted as a reformed hero.

Abe... I have him back in his Beetle armor but he’d be still operating as MACH-5. The idea is that he just upgraded his armor and this time was feeling a bit retro so modelled it on his old Beetle armor. This is also explained in story as part of him accepting his past sort of. There’s a story involved to best explain this, it’s in Giant-Size, Diamondback proposes Constrictor as team-mate. Abe tracks him down and Constrictor instead mocks him for making himself over in the image of a hero and burying his history. So, he decides his next armor will embrace/acknowledge his past. The Other Beetle is still out there (and she’s the one calling herself Beetle).

Karla is so fun, she would get back to being a bit less selfish and accepting that these people are actually her friends. She’d still screw them over and manipulate them to hell, but she’s definitely not going to kill any of them. One thing would be exploring her past history with Blackout and how Blackout remains a bit fixated on her but he doesn’t have the best mental capacity for her to manipulate.

Blackout is a hard one to really wrap my head around. He’s back from the dead but he’s not all there (like he was in Thunderbolts #100). I like the idea of exploring the nature of his existence post-death, and kinda getting a bit freaky with how anorexic his body would be (I remember sending reference points that were all Deadman pieces by Kelley Jones). It’s hard to really justify any of these characters, besides Moonstone, abusing this seemingly barely functioning person who doesn’t have the mental ability for doing much besides following orders and being a bit creepy with Karla. I can see him getting benched a lot but I’m pretty sure - no matter how long I ran with it - i wouldn’t ever want to have him say a full sentence. He’s not a dumb zombie, he’s just a bit out of it and it is more like a character trait that he isn’t very communicative. The idea is that custody of Blackout fell to the Thunderbolts because the Commission don’t want him, prison or Ravencroft can’t hold him and Songbird agrees to take him off their hands to basically stop him from being used by a bad guy or falling into Zemo’s hands again or whatever. 

Ghost... I can’t remember anything I do with Ghost. Sorry!! I mainly remember him and Karla being something of a double-act. He’s too clever/paranoid to be manipulated by her and she doesn’t even bother. I remember the first issue (which I wrote a whole script for!) had a scene with them just sat on the side offering commentary on Amazon on Blackout becoming part of the team.

Juggernaut. He would be back. I want him on the team, I always planned with him on the team, but I’m holding him back initially to allow the other characters a chance to exert their powers (especially, I don’t want him there to dominate the Rulk fight). He’d be back after the Zemo/Osborn story I think. I think the story thing was that Juggernaut was being held pending a trial for his actions committed while possessed in Fear Itself and so he was off-limits for the team. He’s eventually found innocent of those crimes and re-joins the team.

Sandman, I really want Sandman on the team but I’m also very adverse to just putting him on the team because I want him on the team. I never really had much to say with Sandman other than cementing or re-establishing the heroic side of the character from the 90s. I’m sure I had ideas for him but I can’t remember any of them without my files.

I’m sure the third issue was all about Zemo and Fixer (my 3rd issues were all a gimmick too, they would focus/feature a villain). Zemo has a lot of stuff going on, he is a complex character and so much more than just a villain or pretending/trying to be a hero. I am dumping so hard on Fixer, I am absolutely destroying the character but my take is “when I came up with these ideas, Fixer was dead and if I’m bringing him back I need to do something more substancial than just have him be back from the dead”. Personally, I think my idea for Fixer is not at odds and, while it is maybe exaggerating a few moments from old stories, but I basically see him as completely worn out by his hero days and his failed attempts to be accepted like Mel and Abe are. He’s wound up just turning back to Zemo, Zemo always accepted him, he is valuable and treat like he is important by Zemo. Zemo would have a huge plot at the end of the first year. He would go up against Norman Osborn, angered by Osborn usurping his Thunderbolts and believing his Dark Avengers scheme was copying his original Thunderbolts plan. It would end with Songbird and the others interjecting, especially highlighting Moonstone’s history with Dark Avengers, and the end-point would be Zemo denouncing Osborn and effectively not-so-subtly, writing Osborn out from a continued presence in Thunderbolts books. Oh, and Osborn skewering Andreas would indeed be brought up. 

Speaking of, he would be back. In the first annual, we would learn that Andreas’ corpse was found by that sect of The Hand from Enemy of the State and since he was a Strucker, he was resurrected to lead them. It would be implied Zemo tipped them off to the whereabouts of Strucker’s body. Andreas would lead the Hand in an assault on The Raft under the pretense they are recruiting new soldiers but in truth Strucker is using them to get to Osborn and Bullseye (it happens before the above Zemo story and neither of them would actually appear). He would eventually stand down after encountering Songbird again and being reminded by her of his original mission of not being like his father. This would set him up as leading this sect of The Hand to do good ala Daredevil in Shadowland but obviously if Daredevil couldn’t do it, snotty Strucker brat isn’t going to succeed but for the time being he is out there doing stuff.

The second annual is a fun one-off story where Radioactive Man comes to Quicksilver (this is all hinging on one quick scene in Mighty Avengers where they pointed out how they were both heroes now). Chen wants Pietro to put together a Thunderbolts squad to break Collective Man out of a Russian gulag. Part of this is borne from one of my original ideas which was having Quicksilver take on Hawkeye’s leader role. I can’t remember the exact team but I know Finesse was on there, Man-Ape was too and he deserts them immediately. The big one was Crossfire because there was an awesome Quicksilver moment at the end where after they have completed the mission, Pietro beats the shit out of him - breaks his arms and legs - and leaves him behind to presumably be thrown in the same gulag Collective Man was. I remember he’s like “I don’t have many friends but Clint Barton is one of the few I truly do consider more than an acquaintance. You killing Mockingbird’s mother and her desire to eventually exact revenge on you will likely drive another wedge in their attempts to repair their relationship... so I picked you for this team, Crossfire, to stop you from causing any more harm to their lives.” (or something like that)

Eventually there was going to be a “Thunderbolts International” (a riff on Justice League International) which would be a one-off rival team led by Dallas Riordan comprised of Atlas, Jolt, Radioactive Man, Blizzard, Speed Demon, Boomerang, Skein and Cyclone. I think that would be the ... 25th issue? issue 200. It would be a chance to include some of those guys I love but can’t fit on the team. (edit: just remembered this leads into a cool story where a combination of some of both teams end up transported into Kree space). Atlas wouldn’t rejoin the team but the very very final story in my run is an Atlas story. Something of a tragedy where Atlas steps up and is a great hero and nobody will ever know. This would be a big Atlas vs. Fixer epic which i just realised also has a nice undertone of highlighting that they were the two who sided with Zemo back in Thunderbolts #12.

(edit: there was also another team they’d go up against called the Renegades - a team comprised of American Eagle, Sepulchre, Steel Spider and Jack Flag - who recall the Osborn Thunderbolts and as such are very anti-Thunderbolt)

I think there’d be another ad-hoc team at some point, that last story might see Atlas step up and lead one, of which Mentallo would be a member. Mentallo probably should factor into my character assassination of Fixer. I’m so sorry to Fixer fans, he’s going so unhinged. Batroc is another guy I want to throw in somewhere. Most the guys on that cover to Giant-Size Thunderbolts 1 either feature explicitly in that story (with the idea of them being Thunderbolts directly referenced) or will be prominently in another part of the run. 

[caveartfair]

Gallery Weekend Berlin Sees a City Changed—but It’s Art World Has Room to Grow

Installation view of Candice Breitz, Love Story, 2016. Commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Outset Germany, and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Courtesy of Candice Breitz and KOW, Berlin. Photo by Ladislav Zajac / KOW.

When I moved to Berlin in early 2010, there was a palpable sense that everything was about to change. Pretty much everyone who has moved to Berlin at some point over the last 20 years has had that feeling. Most get tired of waiting somewhere between two and eight years later. I lasted five. Returning to the city last week for the 13th annual Gallery Weekend Berlin, however, I soon realized that over the last two years everything has, in fact, changed—and most of it for the better.

Don’t get me wrong, all of Berlin’s galleries aren’t suddenly selling out their shows on opening night. The city is still not overflowing with collectors, and this edition of Gallery Weekend did suffer slightly in terms of international attendance due to the packed spring art-world calendar. But Berlin’s sidewalks are, suddenly, filled with an inordinate number of people dressed head-to-toe in Acne or Gucci, and its streets, filled with many more expensive cars. Economic opportunity in Berlin has grown in very visible ways. Rents have also increased, but they still remain low compared to other major cities, which means that the capital that comes with opportunity can be funneled into disposable income more readily than might be the case in New York or London.

A number of galleries I spoke to over the past week noted that this wave of new wealth in the city is beginning to trickle into their programs. One mid-level gallerist said he was in the process of bringing on one or two very young artists whose prices would be kept low to further encourage the emerging Berlin buyers to forego one or two outfits or a weekend away in favor of a work of art.

Installation view of Anri Sala’s Take Over, 2017. Photo by Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy of the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin.

There was also more immediate evidence of change in the Berlin art scene during Gallery Weekend. Several galleries, including Mehdi Chouakri and Gerhardsen Gerner, have moved to new, more central locations that allow them to take better advantage of foot traffic—something which has never before been a concern in Berlin (there wasn’t much, if any).

Esther Schipper’s new, 5,800-square-foot, Annabelle Selldorf-designed gallery on Potsdamer Strasse, which opened on Thursday, shows yet another facet of the Berlin art scene’s changing face. The move marked not only an almost tripling of the gallery’s exhibition space, but also the culmination of her merger with Johnen Galerie, nearly all of whose artists are now officially a part of Schipper’s program. It also serves as a hallmark of sorts to Schipper’s rise over the past decade from a highly respected program, which has launched careers like those of Philippe Parreno and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (the pair led a toast in Schipper’s honor on Thursday night), to a global force—all without having physically expanded beyond Berlin.

The new space debuts with “Heavy Metal Body,” an exhibition by one of Schipper’s first artists, Angela Bulloch, as well as “Take Over” by former Johnen artist Anri Sala. The latter artist’s exhibition takes its name from a piece that is reminiscent in both scale and effect of Sala’s renowned work Ravel Ravel Unravel for the French Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. A projection wall and a glass wall form an X within the darkened space; on one side, a set of hands plays the Marseillaise, on the other, the Internationale, whose lyrics were originally set to the former’s tune.

Installation view of work by Angela Bulloch, 2017. Photo by Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy of the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin.

There were smaller milestones on view across Berlin too. KOW’s show featured Candice Breitz’s Love Story (2016), a seven-channel video, six of which include refugees who fled conflicts and persecution the world over. The seventh and largest screen features Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore acting out portions of the other six films. Breitz left White Cube for this debut show with KOW. And the work, which was definitively the talk of Gallery Weekend Berlin, will be on view in the South African Pavilion in Venice, starting next week.

Love Story is, without question, the most powerful piece of art about the ongoing refugee crisis I have seen. One moment, you’re punched in the gut, as Moore (playing Syrian refugee Sarah Mardini, whose sister Yusra participated in last summer’s Rio Olympics) recounts jumping into the cold water after their boat ran out of fuel and began to sink. Yusra says she felt a responsibility to use her ability as a swimmer to try to bring the boat to shore. In another moment, you laugh as a sunglasses-wearing Baldwin (playing Farah Mohamed, whose life was in danger in Somalia due to his atheist beliefs) cracks a joke. The piece exposes these individual struggles but also a central issue facing refugees—as Mamy Maloba Langa who fled Kinshasa puts it, “The media is only interested in famous people; I don’t think all those nice people would come just to listen to my story.” It’s sad but true.

Guan Xiao’s video Dengue Dengue Dengue (2017), on view as part of her second solo show with Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, was also among the weekend’s most impactful works. The three-channel work (her strongest format) jumps between internet clips of the New York Stock Exchange’s opening bell, cheerleaders practicing, Muslim men during the call to prayer, and mud-covered festival revelers. The unsettling piece points to habitual practices such as these and then jumps to a satellite shot of severe weather systems over California, suggesting that some of our manmade ills are the result of global, ritualized behavior. Rather than at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler’s east German office space-turned-gallery, however, it’s at the Boros Collection where you see the growing influence of their program.

Katja Novitskova, Pattern of Activation. Photo © NOSHE. Courtesy of Sammlung Boros.

The third hanging of Karen and Christian Boros’s World War II bunker (opening to the public later this week, by appointment), gives two of its largest rooms to the gallery’s Katja Novitskova and Avery Singer (who also opened a show at the Kölnische Kunstverein this past week) and a smaller space to Guan Xiao. In previous hangings, these double-height spaces have been mainly reserved for major works by the likes of Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Ruff, and Tomás Saraceno. And while some perennial favorites of the couple’s collection, like Kris Martin, retain a strong presence in the latest hanging, a much younger and much more internet-driven group of artists leads the conversation this time around.

It’s at once a departure for the collection and a return to form for Christian Boros. The third hanging features an extensive selection of works by Michel Majerus. The artist died in 2002 at the age of 35, but his paintings would not look out of place in a hip, young gallery whose twenty-something artists reflect on image culture and the internet—Majerus pioneered that kind of work two decades earlier. And, as evidenced in a piece in neugerriemschneider’s current show of his late works on aluminum—which, with his recently closed exhibition at Matthew Marks, commemorates the 15th anniversary of this death—Boros was there from the start. Look closely at one black and white work and you’ll see his name printed in the upper right, its cross-like image itself pulled from a campaign Boros produced for one of his first clients, the German music television channel Viva.

Amidst all this growth, however, one issue is that Gallery Weekend Berlin hasn’t grown itself. Most of Berlin’s galleries that are poised to be its next Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler or Tanya Leighton or Societé aren’t part of the official list of 47 participating galleries this year. The gallerists among that missing cohort who I spoke to said that they can’t justify the weekend’s cost (around $10,000) based on what’s offered: primarily, inclusion in the official program, a BMW to ferry collectors to their next stop, and a number of invitations to Saturday night’s dinner.

Installation view of work by Michel Majerus on view at “aluminium paintings.” © Michel Majerus Estate 2017. Photo by Jens Ziehe. Courtesy of neugerriemschneider and Matthew Marks Gallery.

That is not a new argument levied by those who don’t participate. But with Berlin’s economic engine just getting going, now is an opportune time for its most powerful galleries to think strategically about how to avoid the rifts that have sometimes been endemic in the city’s art scene—and how to help foster the young programs that can service the city’s budding collectors. Some are already doing this quietly.

For Gallery Weekend itself, perhaps that means exploring ways to offer lower prices for galleries under five years old, such as allowing them to choose from a menu of the weekend’s typical offerings—including the dinner, which is, understandably the weekend’s greatest limiting factor in terms of both space and budget. Heck, the 25-plus interesting young Berlin galleries and project spaces that could add new blood to the weekend, might rather throw a party after the dinner than invite people to it at all.

With Gallery Weekend Berlin’s previously emerging galleries having grown up, not having that new blood gives an incomplete picture of the city’s art scene to visitors. That’s a good problem to have but one that needs to be addressed.

—Alexander Forbes

from Artsy News

[karlymichelle1]

Please forgive my rant, or maybe not....

As artists, the system is designed the fail us....

To all you artists out there, the system seems to be set up so we will fail - or at least - so we won’t prosper without a whole lotta luck.

To me, a non-businessy person, it seems like a ridiculous business model but maybe I’m missing something.

In this little rant though, let me clarify early on I am not talking about the ‘elite arts’ - that art which can be bought in high end commercial galleries or art that is displayed in funded and established galleries - e.g. the NGV here in Melb. These funded galleries that have free, public exhibitions are doing an enormous service and need to continue to do so. However, they are funded. Also, they do tend to supplement their free exhibitions with paid ones. Also, they are actually a different, whole kettle of fish....

Back to rant:

For the general punters out there, here’s how a lot of galleries work:

You go to a gallery, you get to view the art for free, you leave.

You can buy work if you wish but you probably won’t.

—-

This is the model for nearly all community art galleries and local galleries.

In this little rant, I am talking about the everyday and local galleries, and the artist who lives down the street from you and is trying to save up enough money so that they can afford to hire a gallery to show their work and buy frames.

And yes, you read that correctly - we the artist pay to have exhibitions for a lot of spaces. Not all, but a lot. And you don’t really have a chance of getting invited to exhibit somewhere that will pay you without the exhibitions that you’ve paid for yourself.

Generally, gallery spaces incur none of the financial risk whatsoever. The artists do. But galleries do get some of the profits.

We, the artist, pay a fee for the hire of the gallery space. And I do get that there are expenses that have to be paid to run a gallery.

We more than likely have to pay for advertising (It was included only as standard in the hire cost in one gallery in my limited experience, I have done it myself for the other exhibitions rather than pay extra when available - but if you print anything out, that of course still costs).

We generally have to promote our event ourselves. For some strange reason that I don’t understand nearly all the galleries I’ve exhibited in (admittedly all local, small community galleries - but all established galleries nonetheless who have exhibitions continually) don’t have a great media presence. I have a larger social media presence than most of them which is saying something. So I have create Facebook events, made specific social media banners, sent out emails, put up posters, handed out posters etc. for all of my exhibitions - it takes heaps of time with very little pay off - or at least it feels that way.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t do any of this anyway - but when all a gallery does is put up a poster on the door, maybe a single online post, and send out an email to what is actually a very small list of people (which they possibly lead you to believe was somewhat inflated when you initially spoke to them about hiring the space), it doesn’t feel like they’ve bothered to do much at all. I’m continually surprised at the small online footprint of some of these galleries. And I still don’t understand how galleries that exhibit something new every 2 weeks to 1 month don’t have regular relationships with local papers and advertising places. But again, maybe I’m missing something.

Then we the artist pay the gallery if any of our work actually sells in the form of a commission. Sometimes this is up to 40% but seems to more commonly be about 25/30%. This means, for me anyway, that I price my art at what I think is a reasonable amount for time, materials etc. but I generally don’t add in the extra for the commission - I just take the loss myself because I believe that if I was to put it up even less of it would sell.

Sometimes we even have to pay extra for insurance. But more often than not we’ve already paid for our own insurance anyway. Most of the time though, insurance doesn’t cover the actual artworks, either theft or accident (and I have had people in the gallery touch, move and generally get way to close to pieces so accident is a real possibility - often without the gallery letting them know that it is inappropriate). Insurance just covers public liability, and if we can afford it, personal accident.

Then we the artist essentially pay the general public to come to the opening night because we have to provide for the opening night spread (I’ve had to do this this for all bar one exhibition. Sometimes you don’t organise it yourself, instead you pay for someone else to. I’ve taken to taking on this responsibility completely myself, mostly because I don’t really like the ‘standard’ exhibition opening night traditions (but that’s another whole rant) but also so I have some oversight to the amount that is spent).

Also, ever been to an artists talk event? Maybe not, but they are often scheduled or it is highly recommended that you do one by the gallery and they are often free. Why? Why do we expect a guided, in-depth talk by the artist about the creation of their work to be free?

For some galleries, yes I think this should be free, because they can afford it, they are probably able to pay the artist themselves, and frankly it is going to be beneficial for society to make them free (again, I’m talking larger galleries, those with government funding etc. who can bring in a different type of artist, not your local community art gallery).

So, to sum up, we the artist, have to create a body of work, front all of this money, spend all of this time, with absolutely no guarantee that anyone will buy our work.

Or even turn up to look at it.

It is a system designed to fail us. It is a system that is designed to make the arts seem elitist because to become elitist is the only way to survive. It is the only way to make money. That is, if you can even become an ‘elit’ artist - if your style fits what mainstream society wants, and if you can survive long enough to become noticed.

But to be a grass roots, local, relevant, everyday artist dealing with the issues of society doesn’t pay the bills. It barely covers the materials, so forget about getting any money for your time.

And you know what? This doesn’t just mean the system fails the artists, it also fails society. It does this by not valuing the arts, and the experience and opportunities they offer, by not placing a price on the education and the expectation that someone else can teach you something about art and, most importantly, it deprives us as a society from experiencing more art, of participating in more art. Because I firmly believe that if it wasn’t so expensive to be an artists, that if there was more money to support artists, that there would then be more art and more good art - relevant art, art that invites you in, art that challenges you, that surprises you, that is locally relevant, that is relevant to society, that speaks directly to what is happening in life right now.

To make the art free to access like this, with no means of funding the artist, de-values the artist and art we are creating, because it creates an expectation that it should be free. And this means that there will be less artists and certainly less diverse ones - and possibly less creative and engaging and brave ones because we instead spend so much time simply trying to just survive - which means creating ‘mainstream’ art rather than the art that is actually needed (again, another rant for another time).

My proposal to counter this is $5 (or maybe even $10????) entry to local galleries wherever possible.

I get that for some places this is not realistic but seriously, what’s the harm of putting up a donation tin that is for the artist, or maybe split between the gallery and artist at the end of the exhibition? How is that so hard? Why would that be so wrong? Would that really stop people from going? If you want to be really specific - kids in for free, some sort of group discounts, and after your first entry, you can use your ticket to re-enter the exhibition for the length of the current show.

Would that be so bad?

Except for Artists talks - you’d need to pay your $5  again for that because seriously, you expect us, the artist, to make the art and then talk about it coherently? Artists are generally visual creatures and you’re asking us to also be eloquent?!

And for all those naysayers out there who want to come back and say ‘I value the arts’  - sure you do - and I do believe you - but when was the last time you paid for something that wasn’t pop culture music or film? When was the last time you bought an original piece of art from a local artist? Or a print from a local artist? When was the last time you were prepared and bought a set of handmade cards that’ll cover all the cards you need for the year from a local artist rather than the cheap and cheesy from the newsagent shop as you are on the way to a birthday party? When was the last time you bought a beautifully crafted wooden cheese board from somewhere in Olinda as a gift? Or some handmade jewellery from a local market? Or ordered some beautifully and painstakingly handmade clothing from a local maker?

Forget about gifts and presents - When was the last time you bought something locally handmade rather than the cheap version from a large shop? When was the last time you spent time in a gallery just because?

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be inspired by the craftpersonship? Were awed by the beauty? Challenged? Comforted?

Would you have been prepared to spend $5 to get in?

Would a $5 fee have prevented you from going?

Does it seem that unreasonable?

An aside: And don’t say just go and get a grant. Grants are not that easy- they require realms of paperwork in advance, again without any guarantee you’ll get it, they often require a huge amount of planning and preparation, again without any guarantee you’ll be able to put it into action. You also have to be aware of the available grants. And apply. On time. Often you actually need help from other organisations to submit, which could cost money upfront. Sometimes I think it’s only worth it if you are going to do the project anyway, and just hope that the grant comes through to help. Or, it’s a way to fund the big, really big projects.

But as a local artist, just trying to get your next exhibition up and running - it’s often pretty far fetched.

That’s my rant.

Pay the $5.

Support the arts.