EXHIBIT, ENGAGE, EVOLVE: THE POWER OF FEEDBACK

Putting a successful exhibition together can be a huge undertaking. It takes time and dedication. The benefits of creating and curating a show, however, are extensive and so important for your development and progression as a professional artist.

I’ve spoken to many artists and visitors to the gallery about the joys of exhibiting your own work yourself and have often boiled it down to 3 main points:

1. Selling your work.

   
   

This one seems obvious. To many emerging artists, this can be the most important. It helps vindicate the work you're making, knowing you have found someone else who loves it as much as you do, and the income allows you to keep creating more work. Many galleries take a percentage, but if you can hire a space like ours, you keep 100% of everything you sell, putting money straight back into your pocket.

2. Growing your profile.

   
   

This one is vital as an emerging artist. In the first PDF we released, on the “10 Things We’ve Seen Successful Artists Do”, we spoke about creating “11 touch points” to connect with your audience. Your website or online artist portfolio, exhibition flyers, business cards, written interviews and social media posts all fall under touch points. Hosting an exhibition is another vital one of these and often has the most impact on creating and growing a loyal following.

3. Getting Feedback.

   
   

This final one is often the most overlooked benefit of hosting an exhibition of your work. Getting to meet the art-loving public in person and having the opportunity to talk openly about your work can be so useful to your development as an artist. You begin to understand so much more about your work, from what you end up defending, to learning how your work is being interpreted by others viewing it for the first time.

Asking for, receiving and especially giving feedback can sometimes be done badly. It can often be unhelpful at best or devastating when delivered poorly, so I wanted to talk a little about how best to approach feedback around your own work and when talking to fellow artists.

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ASKING FOR FEEDBACK

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I’ve broken down the process of receiving feedback into four categories.

1. Giving permission

2. Setting parameters

3. Limiting a feedback window

4. Thanks

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

GIVING PERMISSION

Simply hosting an exhibition of your own is often seen by many as an open invitation to critique. You have deemed it worthy of being in a show and therefore it is open to discussion and evaluation. Expect some visitors to be open and honest with their opinions, but inviting others to give their opinions on the work helps break the ice.

Everyone should look to learn more about their work from outside perspectives. It’s so important to understand whether your execution of the work aligns with your intended outcomes. Inviting others to share their opinions is the first step, but it should be guided using the next two points.

SETTING PARAMETERS

Often, for many artists, understanding the difference between good and bad feedback can be difficult. Sometimes bad feedback can feel good, and good feedback feels bad. It’s about how useful the information you are receiving is.

Someone simply telling you they love the work feels great, but is inherently useless when it comes to developing your work further or understanding your art on a deeper level. Similarly, a viewer's harsh critique of your colour choices or composition might leave you feeling deflated, but this might lead to you reflecting on the work and pushing your practice further.

These are simply a few guiding phrases for artists to use that can help viewers give more direct and useful feedback. Something especially useful if they aren’t particularly used to talking about the work they are viewing.

Setting clear parameters and expectations with open questions to your audience helps lead to useful information. Is it practical elements, such as whether the colour schemes used convey the right message, the chosen composition, or whether the materials you have chosen have been used effectively? Or, more emotional, with questions regarding the audience's interpretation of the work on show, being asked instead. It all boils down to what key insights into your work would you find useful to help develop your craft.

On the other hand, refrain from asking about things like pricing your work. That is often specific to your current artistic experience, your place in your journey, and how each piece sits against the body of work it’s part of. You will have expectations and knowledge of how well your work sells. Buyers are always led by the artist. Each buyer is unique, with their own budgets and finances and often lack a strong enough insight into your work, the local market and the art world in general to give a fair and accurate appraisal.

If you want to better understand how to price your work, research your desired audience thoroughly, create a demand for your work by raising your profile as an artist and limit the supply of your work to a few well-publicised exhibitions.

LIMITING THE FEEDBACK WINDOW

This is an interesting but crucial point when asking for feedback. Opening yourself up for critique by putting your work on show can be a draining experience. You can quickly be bombarded by information from your audience, and it can take a while to sift through everything to determine what’s useful and what’s not.

This process can be helped massively by reducing when and where the feedback is coming from, from giving a direct time frame at which you will be accepting feedback, to aiming your questions to a limited audience.

Too much information often leads us to not being able to use any of it. Choosing a select audience, time and place, such as visitors to a week-long exhibition, helps create a focus. I’ve noticed that this, combined with specific and direct questions, leads to the best (most helpful) feedback.

Similarly, there will often be a huge personal experience gap within your audience. The art you create will always mean the most to you as the creator, and the gap between the experiences and knowledge between you and the audience needs to be remembered. Learning to filter and give weight to the variety of information received from lots of different sources takes time and experience to master. Ultimately, don’t take to heart the opinions of those you don’t respect when it comes to your work.

THANKS

Finally, thank everyone who chooses to give you feedback on your work, regardless of its usefulness. It can be a daunting thing for someone to pass judgment on another’s work, and that gratitude will often mean a lot. You should have confidence in your work regardless of others' opinions on it, and thanking those who take the time to talk about it will always convey this. The art community is built through participating in each other's practice, and that thanks goes a long way.

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GIVING FEEDBACK

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The flip side to this is understanding how to give the best feedback to others' work. Knowing how to provide useful feedback can teach you a lot about how to ask others for the same. I’ve listed below a few things I try to remember when asked to give feedback on other artists' work.

Aim to be constructive and seek the positives in an artist's work rather than just pointing out its flaws.

Bad feedback is often just generalisations and blanket statements - stick to answering the questions asked by the artist or choose specific things to focus on, such as the composition, the details or the choice of colours.

Think less about what you might do to “fix the work”, it's important to remember that it's not you creating it. The viewer will almost always know what’s “wrong” with a piece, but rarely know how to fix it effectively.

Realise that the artist has put themselves out there for critique, which can be an incredibly daunting experience. The work they have created is often incredibly personal to themselves, wrapped up in emotional experiences not known to you, the viewer. Their intentions for the work and personal experience will no doubt differ hugely from how you would do it. No one enjoys hearing that their work is disliked, no matter who says it.

If in doubt, be kind.

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Well, that’s it from me with this one! This is a huge subject which I feel I have only just scratched the surface of. We’d love to hear how you might tackle asking for and giving feedback on the artwork you enjoy. Similarly, if there are areas within the creative sphere you would like us to talk about, let us know! Feel free to drop some thoughts in the comments, we love to share ideas with our community!

Arthur