This Saturday gone was London Gallery Day. Did you go? If so, what did you think? Or did you not even know it was happening? It’s an initiative set up by galleries based in either EC1 or WC1 to open on Friday to 8pm and on Saturday from midday to 8pm.
It shows us that between Mayfair and Fitzrovia in the West and Shoreditch in the East, there are a selection of galleries that may get ignored by many people because they are not part of a snappy multi-gallery event such as Fitzrovia lates or First Thursdays. It’s an opportunity for them to band together and draw people in.
Below I’ve set out the highlight and lowlights of the event, as it’s only in it’s second year hopefully it will continue to improve and some of the shortcomings can be addressed in next year’s event.
The positives
Big names – large galleries are needed to draw people in and they were participating. Granted, Gagosian has a sub-par exhibition of Giuseppe Penone and the Dairy had a downright awful exhibition by Julian Schnabel, but Victoria Miro was the saving grace with the engaging Christian Holstad. Despite the varying quality, having such high calibre galleries involved is always good to boost numbers.
Discovering galleries – some galleries are hidden away such as Domobaal and the combination of Hollybush Gardens and Rokeby – nobody’s going to accidentally stumble across these two. But with map in hand they can be found, and I came across a few that I had never heard of before.
Inclusivity – nobody was excluded from the event and the nearby galleries who weren’t involved admitted that they had either chosen not to participate or had forgotten to sign up. Though the inclusion of Charlie Smith was an oddity – surely they come under the Shoreditch umbrella.
The Map – I saw many people walking around with the gallery day map in hand, searching for their next stop. And having the map as a logo plastered on gallery walls and doors is always a great help for people searching for the gallery. Most of the galleries did have copies of the map available to take, and this would surely have been great for getting people involved who were just planning on visiting one gallery but were given the incentive to visit more.
Events – Tying in the day with evening talks and the opening of Modern Art’s new space provided a sense of occasion that the day needed.
Room for improvement
Media coverage – The day didn’t seem to have enough coverage on the internet or in media and so probably didn’t draw in as many people as it could have. For next year, a strong media partner would really drum up interest – much like how Time Out is the media partner for First Thursdays.
Variety in art – Most of the participating galleries had conceptual artists on display – I’m not sure whether this was pure happenstance or that all of these galleries lean towards the conceptual. But involving galleries with different styles, whether they be urban, traditional or other, would broaden the target market.
Co-ordinating events – all the gallery’s seemed to have evening talks forcing everybody to pick one, or two at most. If would have been good for neighbouring galleries to collaborate so people could move from one talk at say 6pm to another at 7pm in another gallery on the same road.
Conclusion
London Gallery Day is a good initiative, there is definite room for improvement but hopefully it’s here to stay as a permanent fixture. There were only a few exhibitions I liked, but that may just be my limited taste for conceptualism. It was great to see many more people than you’d normally see in galleries on Saturdays and I’m interested to know how much of a surge in foot traffic was delivered on this day.
