Alia Josephine
Over the beginning months of 2021, YAMI-ICHI and Exotero Collective collaborated to initiate the Traversing Borders Program, selecting four UK-based artists to experiment with methods of challenging art valuations, the art market, and monetary exchanges. Kicking off the program on April 22nd was the webinar panel discussion BEYOND THE PRICE TAG: Alternative Ways of Valuing Art, facilitated by Charlotte Alderman (Exotero Collective) and featuring Sachiko Osawa (YAMI-ICHI), Lucy Alves (Gatekeeper Magazine), George Thom (Groock’s Gallery), Zoe Da Poian and Eleanor Cowell (New Grooves Gallery).
Each sequential introduction of the represented collectives, magazines, and galleries found common threads between the values that underpin the manifestos and ethos of all. Ultimately, mentalities consistently circled around ideas of accessibility - or perhaps more accurately, common expressions of the art world’s famed inaccessibility. Noted issues raised included: financial barriers to exhibiting, the value of art as too closely tied to commercial worth and resulting exclusionary practices, difficulty finding supportive communities for both artists and audiences, the negative consequences of the ‘struggling artist’ trope, and the lack of assistance for minority voices. Sachiko, the founder of YAMI-ICHI, summarised much of the emerging artist experience with the personal reflection, “I constantly felt like, ‘I don’t belong here,’ because there are so many, you know, unspoken rules, and, you know, those rules are made by those elite, a quite limited demographic of people, and I just felt really uncomfortable.”
Although the foundation of each collective was built on very similar principles, each brought their own unique vantage in addressing the causes for concern. Lucy, co-founder of Gatekeeper Magazine, referenced a lack of agency and autonomy in artists’ ability to decide the value of their own work, observing that much of this quality stems from the “taboo” surrounding discussions of business skills in art education. Through partnering with journalist Natascha Ng, Gatekeeper Magazine was formed to provide educational resources on the topic and highlight market trends and research in the area. For other collectives, the area of assistance is not in helping artists navigate the art market, but rather in providing alternative methods for art valuation, such as YAMI-ICHI’s trademark of non-monetary art auctions. This idea of the alternative market was the cited foundation for both YAMI-ICHI and Exotero, with Charlotte stating of Exotero, “I definitely think the goal of Exotero is to find that alternative method of valuing art, and that doesn’t mean that we don’t want artists to live, and earn great livings, but that is something that often people can view in quite a binary way.”
Sachiko further contemplated YAMI-ICHI’s history of asserting art in non-traditional places, providing a segue into George discussing Groock’s Gallery, where the central focus is on ideas of radical inclusion and sharing of knowledge, presented online in a “borrowed” piece of architecture originally from a video game, now rendered into a virtual gallery/temple. For George, virtual gallery spaces represent a new variable to the art market unparalleled historically, with the potential to democratise which artists receive exposure through a “separate space, running alongside” traditional art spaces. For Zoe and Da Eleanor, New Grooves Gallery echoes similar affirmations regarding their virtuality, allowing for minorities to create their own spaces without the need for resources usually required to do so, reducing accessibility barriers and increasing levels of diversity. To the galleries model, allowing the genuine and natural discovery of small niches, communities, and artists is critical to its purpose and function, and one of the overall strengths of the virtual model.
Despite the hard work by these creatives in democratising art spaces, there were still some qualities in artist success reliant on the artist themselves. Perseverance and persistence, networking, reaching out to organisations such as the ones involved in the panel, collaboration, and proactivity were a few of the words of advice for emerging artists. However, the function of these young spaces is not to be discredited, and their future as stakeholders in the art world will be exciting to witness.
You can watch a full recording of the panel discussion below.