How to apply to exhibit your work in an art gallery

So here it is. You've been passionate about your art practice for so long now and you are now at that stage where you want to apply to some exhibitions to finally exhibit your work. This is a key area for any practicing artists who want their work to be seen by the public, and unlike your practice, I'm afraid you'll have to be prepared to endure in some bureacracy. There are three things that form your application. Your CV, documentation of your work and a slide list.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. 1) ART CV. This actually differs from your regular CV ( that is, the CV that you use to apply to jobs), and it should be clean concise and easily readable. Display your name, date of birth, address, and any other of your contact details. It has to be easy for the Panel to contact you immediately if they need to.
   
   You also need to list your qualifications that is relevant to what the Panel want. Usually any higher education such as degrees in Fine Art, and Master degrees etc etc. You need to list your university or college too. In any case, for those in the UK, you might want to list where you did your foundation course too. I don't think it is necessary to display what grade you got in any of the courses, as people judging are indifferent to specific grades. However, it might be worth mentioning that they are NOT indifferent to what college or university you have gone to. Within the last year of university it was generally assumed that Slade was 'in fashion' as it were. But that is not to say that graduates from the big London art colleges are more likely to be accepted.
   
   List the exhibitions that you have been in. If you haven't got that much experience and have recently graduated then you can list things like your degree show and other small exhibitions that you have been involved in. List whether they were group exhibitions or solo exhibitions and the year.
   
   Publications. If you have written about the works of a particular artist and have had it printed then list it. You need to show that you are artistically pro active and have been constantly involved within the field.
   
   You might want to make a small section about yourself and what you do in your spare time that is RELEVANT. So, if you regularly contribute photography to a bird magazine then now is the chance to say it. Or if you are involved in helping children via art therapy then say so. These will generally work to your advantage, albeit how small. But I should say that this should only be a couple of sentences.
   
   Panel judges scheme through applicants quickly and therefore your CV needs to be concise and not overly wordy. You can attach references if you want to but they are generally not neccesary. And please, DO NOT LIST YOUR PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT IF IT ISN'T RELEVANT! The panel judges will sneer if you have listed that your worked in McD's in the 80's.
2. DOCUMENTATION. No matter how much new media has progressed within the last several years it should be made clear that the usual form of documentation of your art within your application is by SLIDES. Slides need to be numbered and clearly marked with your name along the top. Then an arrow should proceed along the right hand side pointing up to denote which way the slide is to be viewed.
   
   The image themselves should be easy to see and look as clean as possible. Now I understand that taking pictures of your work can be extremely difficult especially when you haven't got the right equipment or conditions to do so. One of the ways which I think is best to make your slides is digitally. Set up your work in a in a nicely lit area and take pictures of using a digital camera and a tripod. If you can't get the lighting conditions correct, then it might be worth trying to overexpose the pictures as you take them. All digital cameras have them.
   
   Afterwards you can upload them onto a computer and photoshop them! You heard me say it. Photoshop can be used to alter your digital images before you send them off to be made into slides. So try play around with the features to get the look right. Generally you want to avoid slides being too dark or 'tinted', as in they have a coloured hue to them a la orange.
   
   More importantly, the panel judges will generally NOT place your slides in a slide projector and will just hold them up to the light to view them. Therefore it is paramount that they can tell what they are looking at easily. Furthermore sometimes it would help if they could tell the scale of your art work by looking at the slides alone. So having that unneccesary door in the background, or the light switch to the side of it can actually be a positive thing in order for the Panel to get a grasp of its scale immediately. However this should not obstruct the art work or be used all the time.
   
   Be selective with your slides too. Applications should have about 12 at the most. Depending on what kind of work you do and whetehr you need a lot of detail shots or not.
   
   For video art you need to send in an edited 5 minute segment of your film via DVD. It needs to be able to function when it is placed in a DVD with EASE. It needs a title screen with your name, name of film, how long the segment is and how long the film is. You might also want to send in a Slide image of how you want the film to be installed.
3. SLIDE LIST. This should be numbered according to the slides and stating the name of the work, size (hxw), and materials.
   
   If you have a DVD then state the name and duration of the peice.