MEET THE IBAs
YOUNG, GIFTED and FORGING their OWN CONNECTIONS THROUGH the POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA – THIS IS the NEW GENERATION of BRITISH ARTISTS TO INVEST in NOW
The artists swapping galleries for Instagram to raise their profiles and sell work, too
Shortly after graduating in photography in 2O12, Juno Calypso started experimenting with her artist alter ego, Joyce. She would take photos of herself dressed as the character, a lonely woman consumed by beauty ideals, wearing wigs and babydoll dresses in her grandmother’s house or in bedrooms decorated with pink walls and chintz. She took the photographs in secret, and, once she returned home, she would post them on Tumblr. Then she forgot about them entirely.
A few months later, she decided to search her name on the platform. That’s when she discovered everything had changed. ‘It was a complete shock,’ she says, her voice ever-so-slightly trembling as she recalls the moment. ‘The posts had gone viral and suddenly there were thousands and thousands of followers. I remember thinking, I’m finally in the arena.’
Like many artists, Juno found herself fresh out of art college with no gallery representation. Instead of waiting for a chance connection with an eminent gallerist (whose mere name can open impenetrable doors in the art world), Juno took her career into her own hands – using online platforms to share her work. Within just a few months, small style websites had started to take note, then celebrities, including singers Paloma Faith and Marina (formerly Marina and the Diamonds), both of whom posted her work to their millions of social media followers. She now has more than 115,OOO followers on Instagram and, rather more crucially, a ready-made market to show her work to. ‘Your feed has to be your portfolio,’ she says. ‘It’s your calling card.’
Juno is part of a generation of artists who have graduated into an art world that has had its centuries-old foundations shaken to its core. Social media has not only allowed them an open storefront to the world, it has also helped blast apart the age-old gallery networks. Traditionally, gallery representation has played the single most important role in progressing an artist’s career, offering both prestige, contacts and achieving the ultimate goal: a museum show. But it’s a hyper-competitive world, with only a finite number of artists able to get representation… let alone being spotted in the first place. (The chances of a future Mark Rothko emerging from the outskirts of Hull with minimal networks are, unsurprisingly, limited.)
This is why an entirely new art scene has formed alongside this more traditional route, creating stars from highly diverse backgrounds. Just as fashion models have been able to bypass agents, thanks to the recent rise in street casting, artists are now being spotted on social platforms first. ‘The old-school way would be to go into a gallery with one of my paintings,’ says Ania Hobson, who won the Young Artist Award at the BP Portrait Awards last year and recently exhibited at the Venice Biennale. ‘I used to do that. But now I don’t need to, because I follow galleries on Instagram, or they come to me.’
For many, social media has become a lifeline, allowing them to show their work to an engaged international audience and either make direct
“SUDDENLY I had THOUSANDS of FOLLOWERS. I REMEMBER THINKING, ‘I’M FINALLY in THE ARENA’”
sales or be invited by galleries to exhibit their work. ‘My entire artistic career is dependent on social media,’ says Joy Miessi, whose texture-rich work has an almost Basquiat quality to it. ‘It sounds kind of scary to say it out loud, but I wouldn’t have had the exhibitions I’ve had or be selling work and making prints if it wasn’t for Tumblr and Instagram.’
While Instagram is now the preeminent platform for artists to promote themselves and grow their network, it didn’t start there. ‘I remember people used to use Flickr and Photochain or message boards,’ says Juno. ‘But Tumblr is what really started it. It had a specific aesthetic, which was very “teenage bedroom DIY”. It was clever and witty.’ Tumblr’s strong aesthetic meant it became the obvious place for artists to show their portfolio in the years before Instagram launched in 2O1O. ‘I was posting to document my work, having a photo of it was like keeping some kind of diary,’ says Joy.
As the online following has moved away from Tumblr to Instagram, more artists have been able to gain visibility and make career-defining connections as part of the process. Juno spotted the talent of fellow artist Charlotte Edey thanks to Instagram posts of her sci-fi-inspired illustrations and giant tapestries. Juno was so impressed by what she saw on social media, she nominated Charlotte for Artist of the Day at Mayfair’s Flowers Gallery, which resulted in a prestigious solo show and has led to several other shows at galleries including TJ Boulting in London.
For Charlotte, who didn’t go to art school, this kind of instant network was invaluable. ‘Democratisation isn’t a new word when you put it in the context of Instagram, but that’s exactly what it is. I didn’t get a degree or make the sort of network that you might make at art school, so it was one of those things where you could build a platform from your bedroom.’
Goldsmiths graduate Daisy Parris, who works on six-foot-tall canvases using thick, layered brush strokes and whose works sells for thousands of pounds, shares this entrepreneurial spirit. ‘It’s gone back to a DIY way of working because of social media. That is where I get all of my work from. We don’t need the institution now.’ And, while Daisy acknowledges that there will always be snobbery in the art world – ‘If you look at who can afford to buy work, it’s the middle and upper classes, so naturally [those are the kind of artists] the galleries go to’ – she sees this as a real moment for working-class artists like her: ‘I’m not going to be stopped. I’m going to do it myself,’ she says.
Art and commerce have always had a natural tension: artists know how to create visionary work; sales people know how to flog it. It is why gallerists have always played such a prominent role in the life of an artist, with the super gallerists of the 197Os and 198Os – Leo Castelli, Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone – becoming almost as famous as the artists they represented. What these individuals had was an ability to spot talent, create hype and drive prices into the stratosphere. Julian Schnabel was a line cook before he persuaded Mary Boone to come and look at his giant figurative canvases. Once the diminutive, sharp-talking Boone took him on, he became a star. (She did the same with Barbara Kruger and Jean-Michel Basquiat.)
But this traditional path and the importance of being represented by a gallery hasn’t always worked out well for artists. When the art market crashed in 199O, Boone was accused of creating too much hype around her artists, pressurising them to sell inferior work in order to keep up with demand.
“SOCIAL MEDIA is WHERE I GET ALL of MY WORK. WE don’t NEED the INSTITUTION NOW ”
And being at the whim of a gallerist still has its drawbacks today. When an artist gets taken on by a high-end gallery, promising the world in return for exclusivity to sell their work, it can seem like a good career move. But if the gallery inflates prices and sales are not forthcoming, then the artist can find themselves trapped.
There’s also the issue of money. Most galleries will take a 5O% commission on work, which can be justified in some cases (for example, the gallery takes on all the financial risk when taking work to international art fairs). But if the artist is not being actively promoted by the gallery, it can be an extortionate cut – which is why selling directly through Instagram has become so appealing. The majority of Daisy Parris’ sales come from private collectors through the platform, from all around the world. The advantage of selling this way is that she knows where her artwork is going: ‘That’s the good thing about Instagram, you get the personal touch. Through a gallery, you don’t always know where it’s going to end up, and that’ll be the last time you see it.’ (One young artist, whose works sells for tens of thousands of pounds, lamented to ELLE that their work, which is sold through a high-end gallery, ends up in the iceberg basements of oligarchs, where almost no one ever sees it.)
What’s more, as well as driving direct sales, Instagram has become the place that brands turn to to spot their next artist collaboration. Last year, Joy Miessi worked with Gucci for the launch of its Gucci Bloom Acqua di Fiori fragrance: ‘You don’t really know who is following you, so you suddenly get a message to say, “Hey, I saw this piece of work”, and they sign off and it’s Gucci,’ says Joy, whose latest solo show at Beers London gallery in Shoreditch came about from a DM on Instagram. Miu Miu has also approached Charlotte Edey off the back of her Instagram posts and commissioned her to create three illustrations to accompany the launch of its Miu Miu Fleur D’Argent fragrance.
But the Instagram bubble comes with its own problems of hype and inflation. While artists can thrive from greater visibility and better connections, having hundreds of thousands of followers on social media isn’t the ultimate marker of success. ‘It can all seem so appealing in an instant and everyone wants your artwork now,’ says Katy Hessel, who works at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London and runs the influential Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists. ‘But, actually, you have to think about what your art is going to be in 1O, 2O years’ time.’
As with previous generations, longevity is still important for the artists of today, which makes them cautious about relying too much on social platforms: ‘I’m aware of not building a whole career out of it,’ says Juno, who is now represented by the gallery TJ Boulting after winning a competition to exhibit there. ‘The less I use [Instagram], the better I feel. Sometimes I think, OK, if this disappeared tomorrow, I’d be all right.’
For many artists, gallery representation is still the end goal because of the practical support: doing business on Instagram means constantly
replying to DMs, authorising sales and several trips to the post office to send your work around the world. All this is time taken away from one thing: making art. Painter Faye Wei Wei, who is represented by Cob Gallery in north London, has more than 2O,OOO followers on Instagram but would never sell through the platform. For her, you need to be represented by a gallery ‘if you want to play the game properly’.
Perhaps the most crucial point for any artist is whether art can truly be appreciated through a digital lens. The thick and textured brush strokes, the sheer size or the intricacies of a piece of art often only truly connect with an individual once they’re standing in front of it. ‘I really want people to come to a show and see the works,’ says Faye. ‘To really linger and be moved by it. With the internet, you can still be really drawn to things, but there’s nothing like seeing something in real life.’