Yesterday I took part in a craft fair in Wokingham, a new venue for me. A couple took great interest in one of my collagraph prints and it turned out they were from a new art gallery in the town. They asked whether I would be interested in coming in and letting them have some of my prints for their browsers.
Initially I was quite keen and obviously very flattered, but when I went along and had a chat they started making demands about not being represented elsewhere within a 20 mile radius and wanting the print area in a certain position on the paper with a deckle edge. They went on to talk about other services they offer such as scanning images and putting them on metal, vinyl and all sorts of other things. They also claimed to offer framing but admitted they buy in all the materials ready cut and simply assemble the frames (my lovely picture framer would not be impressed!).
All this made me rather wary, and I felt rather let down. I've never 'worked' with a gallery before, aside from having some prints accepted this summer for the browser at the Lightbox Gallery in Woking (which felt very prestigious, as they do 'proper' exhibitions there featuring real artists like Hockney and Raphael). It made me think about how I choose to present my work, and whether reproducing it on other media completely alters the work. The gallery was very keen that the collagraph they liked should be presented with a deckle edge cut small enough so it could be float mounted, however I had a framed copy of that print with me and had window mounted it. While I love deckle edges and usually use a deckle cutter whether I intend it to show or not, I hadn't designed that print to be shown in such a way and suddenly felt very possessive about it.
I started thinking about who really 'owns' the work, and the right to decide how it should be presented. Is it ever the artist? Should they get the final say in how their work is framed or presented? As a buyer of art I enjoy choosing the right colour mount and moulding to best present my purchases in my home, but should I be asking the artist whether they had anything specific in mind? I have only ever bought a few pieces ready framed and usually the frame was either purpose made for the work or the work sized to fit a specific frame size so it worked beautifully. When I took part in a group exhibition I took my work to a professional framer and together we decided what would suit each piece best, whilst appealing to the maximum number of buyers and adhering to the exhibition rules about colours. I was horrified to discover that most of the rest of the group buy the cheapest frames they can find and just cut their own mounts if needed. I felt like 'outing' them when I was stewarding the exhibition and a couple were pondering the framing of something and eventually concluded that 'it's what the artist chose so it must be right'. I have recently taken the stunning monoprint my husband bought at that exhibition out of its awful frame and discovered the acid in the mount has altered the colours around the edges, it is currently being re-framed in acid free materials and a far nicer frame! This definitely represents a situation where the artist didn't do the best thing for the work or present it to its best advantage.
I decided that I should give the gallery a chance, it's a small local gallery and I have been clear about the fact I have prints in browsers elsewhere but not close enough to provide any realistic competition. I have however stipulated that I do not want my work to be scanned or reproduced in other media. I already produce cards from some of my prints, they're my bread and butter at craft fairs and usually the sales of those cards cover the stall fee. I make a point of showing customers the original print the card is of if possible and I think reproduction cards and postcards of artworks are an accepted way of making a little extra money whilst very obviously not claiming to be the 'original' piece of work (that does not apply to my hand printed cards which are the original). I worry that were I to reproduce one of my prints at twice the scale on shiny metal it would be assumed that this is how the artwork was intended to be presented when the original idea was conceived. As someone who takes pride in selecting different weights and properties of paper to suit different techniques and produces editions of original art works, the idea of transferring it to a new surface by machine without any 'handmade' element does not appeal. I know of two printmakers who have been commissioned to produce public artworks and have transferred linocut designs to enamel but these works were designed from the outset to be made in this way.
The question of how the artist intends the viewer to encounter their work and how the artwork should be presented in its completed form is such an interesting one. We're so used to seeing artworks on phone and computer screens, blown up in posters and touted around on banners and leaflets, what would the often long-dead artist say to their work being presented in this way? Is it acceptable because we all know were not seeing the original? Is the cropping of artworks to the edge in books OK or should there be some sort of frame or border if that's how the artist intended it to be viewed? Or is it different when we know were looking at a reproduction not an original, and where do we draw the line when we start transferring oil paintings to different media to sell more of them? I frequently encounter one artist at craft fairs who paints anything and everything - Peaky Blinders characters, unicorns, ocean scenes, flowers, you name it, he'll paint it. He then reproduces his painting on canvases in three different sizes and sells them. He makes a packet! It's certainly not the sort of 'art' I choose to buy. I always wonder whether his customers are really clear about what they're buying, or are we so used to things being easily reproduced that they would never expect to buy something unique, in a size determined by the artist, presented in a way the artist has chosen? In these days of so much choice is it asking too much to have the whole artists vision or nothing, or is the framing the little bit of creativity that the customer gets to add to complete the artwork, just for them?