A friend of ours Helen was kind enough to give us 500 email addresses for the press from her years of dealing with the media as the owner of a successful printing company. I felt very fortunate having these contact details, which are like gold.
Since I began painting I have always got my own Pr. Ofcourse other people have helped. The galleries get you some valuable publicity during exhibitions, but there is a limit to this publicity time, and as artists we need to create publicity and interest in our work beyond this brief time frame, and create our own media contacts separate to those of the gallery to service a range of PR possibilites.
The advice I received from Helen was that journo's are basically time poor, so have all the information that you need to get across avalaible with high res links to make it easy for them. Through experience I know that stories sell the idea of paintings. For example if you flick through the herald culture section, there is one story about a painter where the guy is chinese and gay and how he has tried to fit in and used art as a medium of self expression. Another story is of a down hill skier who had a bad accident, and can't ski any more so now she paints, and TIM OLSEN has given her a show. So you see a human element, something that the audiance can relate to really helps to add another dimension to the work. When I came back and had a show from Paris I was known as the little squat girl, a girl who painted through the winter without electricity. It facinated people.
Having breakfast down at Walsh bay while Speaking to Journalists while driving around the city is not my normal occupation.....very different from hanging out by myself in a messy fumy studio. I really enjoyed it when I got a positive response, with 2 journalists who have already deceided to run the story of my exhibition DIRTY PRETTY THINGS 19 feb-2nd march showing at Richard Martin art, but also hit what seemed like a million voice mails, and one woman who was so rude that she made my hair stand on end. Helen's response was to toughen up, and toughen up I shall, because tomorrow will be more of the same.....cold calls for breakfast lunch and dinner, but if Press is what the show needs, then press is what I'll get!
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