Art News and Updates from Gallereo
All the latest news from the art world, as well as what's happening here at Gallereo. If you've built a gallery at Gallereo, let us know about your experience and you and your site could feature in our blog in the coming weeks.
Wednesday 02nd November 2011Why Not Enter the Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition?As a happy consequence of working with websites for artists and photographers on a daily basis, we get to see a lot of great artworks and photographs. Some we think, may even be potential future competition winners, which is why we thought to bring the UK
Landscape Photographer of the Year awards to your attention!
The winner for 2011 of the Landscape Photographer of the Year has already been announced, so you now have the time to get ready for sending in entries for the 2012 competition. There were some absolutely fabulous pictures entered in 2011, and no doubt choosing a winner was an incredibly difficult task.
As well as having the honour of winning such a competition, there are other bonus' to help spur you on, such as a £10,000 prize fund, and the chance to have your photographs published in the Sunday Times Magazine, and also in a book dedicated to the competition.
There are actually two classes within the competition; Landscape Photographer of the Year and the Young Landscape Photographer of the Year for entrants who are aged 16 or under, so anyone of any age, and any ability can enter with a chance to suceed.
Here's a quick look at some of the finalists, and the work of the 2011 winner, Robert Fulton:
The winning entry from Cumbernauld-based photographer, Robert Fulton.
Urban photography from Howard Kingsnorth, The Dark Square Mile, London
Tim Harvey, Rocquaine Bay During a Winter Storm, Guernsey, Channel Islands
Clive Collie, Near West Ilsley
Simon Byrne, Micheldever Woods, Hampshire, England
Dudley Williams, West Pier in Snow,Brighton & Hove, East Sussex
Posted on November 02nd 2011 on 10:53am
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Monday 31st October 2011Fun at the Manchester Buy Art Fair 2011This past week was a busy one for Gallereo. On Thursday (27th), we packed up a small van, and drove to Manchester to set up for the Buy Art Fair 2011.
We had a great weekend showing a range of artists who can be found in the Gallereo network, such as Hans Meertens, Mark Jessett and Nigel Painting.
We got to meet a lot of artists during the course of the weekend, a lot of art lovers and collectors, and also some superb galleries, dealers and arts organisations.
We hope to be able to keep Gallereo travelling so that more and more people can find out about us, and see some of the amazing artwork that artists in the network have to offer.
Here are some photographs of us getting set up, and the event at Spinningfields in Manchester city centre.
Enjoy!
Posted on October 31st 2011 on 04:47pm
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Saturday 22nd October 2011It's All Happening Up North: The Turner Prize 2011 at Baltic
The Turner Prize is one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the art calendar in the UK, and this year it is going to be particularly special.
The Turner Prize was established in 1984, and is awarded to a British artist, under fifty, who has made an outstanding contribution to British art in the 12 months preceding the award. Usually held at Tate Britain in London, this will be the first time that the award has been held outside of a Tate institution.
In 2007 the prize was held at the Tate Liverpool, in it's first visit outside of London, but this year it is being held at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle upon Tyne.
In the running this year are artists Karla Black, Matin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw. The prize goes forward to a jury which, this year, includes Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Britain, Katrina Brown who is Director of The Common Guild in Glasgow, Vasif Kortun from Platform Garanti in Istanbul, Nadia Schneider who is a freelance curator and Godfrey Worsdale, who is the current Director at Baltic.
The Turner Prize offers up a cash reward of £40,000, split between the artists. £25,000 goes to the winner, with £5,000 to each of the nominees.
The Turner Prize was previewed to the public at an event at Baltic last night, and the winner will be announced on December 5th. The exhibition itself will run until 8th January, giving people lots of time to visit the first installation of the show outside of the normal confines of the Tate.
Posted on October 22nd 2011 on 03:49pm
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Wednesday 19th October 2011Gallereo Will be Showing at the Manchester Buy Art Fair
Last month, Gallereo made its first public appearance at an art fair by showcasing artists and their dazzling websites at the NewcastleGateshead Art Fair. We had such a great response to what we are doing that we are going to be doing the same again, only this time we're taking the show to Manchester.
From the 27th - 30th October, Spinningfields in Manchester will be home to one of the most contemporary and successful affordable art fairs. The Buy Art Fair has been going from strength to strength in recent years, reporting good numebrs in both attendance and sales.
Gallereo will be settling in at stand 26 at this years fair, in an effort to spread the word about who we are, and what we do. We will also be showcasing a range of artwork from artists in the Gallereo network. Visitors to the fair will be able to get a glimpse of the sort of artists that we have on board, as well as looking at a host of websites that have been created through our website builder.
If you get your timing right, you may even have a chance to talk to some of the artists themselves and get a first hand account of what it's like to work with us.
We're excited to be taking Gallereo to Manchester, and we hope that we have as good a response to website building as we did in Newcastle, and we hope to keep encouraging interest in the work of the artists that are coming along for the ride.
For a full run down of who, what, why, where and when, visit our
exhibitions website for news and updates about the fair.
Posted on October 19th 2011 on 03:58pm
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Saturday 08th October 2011Did You Know That You Can Use Google Analytics with Gallereo?We are pretty big fans of
Google Analytics, and for that reason, we've made sure that you, as a Gallereo website user, are able to integrate your own Google Analytics account with your artist website.
Here's how it all works.
What Is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a very useful, free tool, that allows you to gather metrics about your website in terms of how many people are visiting, what they're looking at, how they found you and how they have used your website. And those are just the basics!
By using Google Analytics you can find out where your website traffic is coming from, which pages are most popular, or which pages are sending people away. You can see which countries, or even cities, your visitors are coming from, and whether they are using search engines to find you or if they have been referred from the likes of Facebook or another site that links to you.
Why Would it be Useful?
A website is nothing without visitors, and it's likely that you have some personal goals for your website, whether that be to let people around the world see your artwork, to advertise your next exhibition in order to get more people through the doors, or whether you want to sell your artwork online.
Without an understanding of how people are using your website, it's impossible to know whether you are reaching those goals, or to work out what you could do to move closer towards your goals.
If you just want to grow the audience for your work, then knowing your traffic levels and time spent on your website might be enough. You want a high level of traffic, but a low bounce rate, as you want them to actually spend time looking at your site, not just to click away within a couple of seconds.
If you want to advertise your exhibition and have created targeted information on you website, you might want to set a goal in your Google Analytics admin so say you want to drive people to that particular page on your site. You can then track stats for that individual page, as well as learning where people are coming from when they view that page.
If you're looking to sell artwork, you can again set up goals with Google Analytics where you can create a funnel of steps that you want people to perform. Each of the steps would take a user closer to making a purchase, so you would have the artwork page, the cart page, then each step down the shopping cart, with the confirmation page as the goal. You would then be able to see how many people had attempted to buy, how far they got through the funnel, and perhaps what has stopped them from completing the transaction.
How Do I Set it Up and Integrate?
Setting up and using an account is free, so to get started go to
http://www.google.com/analytics/. On the introductory page, click the sign up button and sign up for a Google account if you don't already have one. If you do already have one, you will be able to assign that to Google Analytics.
Once into Google Analytics you need to create a new account, so give your account a name, and then enter your website URL.
Make sure that the time zone is correct and then set your data share settings to suit your preferences before choosing your region again for the user agreement.
Tick to agree with the terms and conditions at the bottom of the page, and click to create your account. On the next page you will be asked to confirm some details about the tracking in order to create a tracking code, and in most cases tracking for a single domain will be fine, so select that and then copy the code that you are given in the box at the bottom of the page.
Now open you Gallereo website admin, and go to the configuration menu. Here you will see a section for Google Analytics. Open that section and past the full code into the box.
Press save.
Back in Google Analytics you can press save at the bottom of the page which will take you to through to your dashboard area where you will later start seeing results from your website.
Note that it can take 24 hours for Google Analytics to find the code on your website and start pulling in results so don't panic if you don't see something straight away.
Now that you're all set up, you can sit back and anaylise your website traffic until your heart's content.
Posted on October 08th 2011 on 02:45pm
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Monday 03rd October 2011Willem de Kooning: A Museum of Modern Art RetrospectiveWillem de Kooning was a Dutch-American Abstract Expressionist painter, who was born in Rotterdam in 1904 and later reached fame as a member of a group of artists known as the New York School.
de Kooning can be counted amongst some of the most revolutionary painters of the last century, with the likes of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell and Clyfford Still, to name just a few.
September this year saw the launch of de Kooning: A Retrospective, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Organised and curated by John Elderfield, the exhibition is the first full-scale museum exhibition to be entirely devoted to the full scope of de Kooning's career. Almost 200 works of art have been compiled for this blockbuster show that gives a worthy overview of the artists life, struggles and artistic output.
The show is installed at MoMA in chronological order, with each room giving some thought to, and a pictorial showcase of, how the artist developed and set about the challenges of being an Abstract Expressionist painter.
Perhaps best known for his work in representing the figure, de Kooning's retrospective takes a deeper look at his battles with figuration and abstraction, and how he took deconstruction of the human form to new levels. Exploring the energy of the body, through dashes of lines and colour, de Kooning would set himself apart from the other big names of Abstract Expressionism through his work on the human figure.
Towards the end of his life, de Kooning battled with alcoholism and dementia, and the paintings that were done during this period are often neglected or cast aside, but Elderfield has chosen to include them in this retrospective. Not only have they been included, but they are given equal consideration, allowing the public audience to make up their own minds about whether the works show the mental and physical demise of a great 20th century artist, or whether they are an equal part of his ever evolving ouvre.
The show runs at MoMA, New York until the 9th January 2012.
Image:
Woman I
1950–52
Oil on canvas
6' 3 7/8" x 58" (192.7 x 147.3 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase
Posted on October 03rd 2011 on 12:24pm
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Saturday 01st October 2011Gemini G.E.L. Catalogue: A Gold Mine of Prints and Sculpture
Last month it was announced that the National Gallery in Washington D.C. was to launch a newly expanded version of the Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) online catalogue raisonné.
Gemini G.E.L. was a Los Angeles-based print and sculpture workshop, operating between 1966 and 2005. The online catalogue holds records and images of 2,069 editions produced by the workshop, with 333 of those having been newly introduced to the expanded version of the raisonné.
Gemini have worked with some of the most important artist of our time, which includes the likes of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauchenberg, Susan Rothenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, John Baldessari and Vija Celmins. Gemini was well known for it's eagerness to explore and experiment with new technologies and printing processes, which made it such a draw to top level artists.
The new expansion to the catalogue charts the years 1997 to 2005, which saw artists such as Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly and Bruce Nauman adding to their print ouvre, but also artists like Cecily Brown, Chris Burden, Robert Gober and Brice Marsden joining the Gemini ranks.
As well as a brilliant online collection of works, the catalogue also presents expanded and revised essays about the workshop, the artists that they worked with and the contribution that they have made to contemporary art.
Posted on October 01st 2011 on 11:43am
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Monday 26th September 2011Gallereo at the NewcastleGateshead Art Fair 2011This week is a big week for Gallereo; we are making our first official venture out into the world of exhibiting, by showcasing the works of some of the Gallereo artists at the 2011
NewcastleGateshead Art Fair.
The fair kicks off with an invitation only preview night on Thursday 28th September, and then runs through until the 2nd October.
We are going to be on Stand P4 where we will have some fantastic examples of printmaking, painting, drawing and photography from artists who have previously created a website with our
artist website builder.
We will also have a computer set up in case anyone wants to give Gallereo a go, would like a live demonstration or even if you just want to ask us some questions, we'd be more than happy to have a chat with you.
To get your online creative juices flowing, here are examples of the websites of the artists from this years fair:
Posted on September 26th 2011 on 02:53pm
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Saturday 17th September 2011Cumbrian Artist Open Studios - Try Something Different this SeptemberIf you're looking for something a little different to do this September, why not take a look at the C-Art event taking place in Cumbria!
C-Art is a huge open studio event held in the Lake District. It opens the doors to around 100 artists studios across the county, giving the public a chance to see the artists at work, to ask questions and purchase works from the artists themselves.
There will be a wide variety of practices on show, including ceramics, printmaking, photography, painting and carpentry and if you were to tour the whole event you would be able to take in some seriously astounding countryside as well.
Different studios are open on different days, depending on the artist's availability, so check the
C-Art website where you can find a calendar and a map to organise your whole trip.
You should also keep your eye out for any Gallereo members, and make sure to pay them a special visit!
Posted on September 17th 2011 on 07:49pm
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Wednesday 14th September 2011The Game - From the Tate and The National Galleries of ScotlandA brand new game has been designed a launched for the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, by Bristol based creative agency
Thought Den.
Artists Room: The Game is designed to get people involved, and thinking about what goes into creating exhibitions in the museum space.
The game starts by prompting you to choose a team of people to help you create your artist room. You start with a limited budget for hiring so you have to think smart. Your teams strength and experience can help boost your game score, and the more team members you have, the higher your score multiplier.
In choosing your team, you have to pick 4 types of team member, and for each type you can choose to have 1 member, 3 members or 5 members. You have to choose someone for each of the following; Interpretation, Preservation, Technical and Marketing. With such a small budget you have to balance the numbers on your team wisely.
Once you've chosen your team, you then have to pick an artist that you'd like to exhibit in your room. We went for Ed Ruscha (big fans) and then were asked to pick 5 works from a given selection.
Once you're room is set up, with your artworks hanging proudly, you're then ready to play the game. You have to go through the 4 areas of Interpretation, Preservation, Technical and Marketing, performing different tasks.
For interpretation, you are taken to a work in the room, and asked questions about the work, and the artist in general. Answering correctly increases your score.
For Preservation, you are taken to another work, and given a set of skill games, following the onscreen instructions to add more to your score.
For Technical we are told how important lighting is to making the artwork look good, and keeping it safe. Then there is another skill game for getting the lighting right to score more points.
For Marketing you are given scenes with various types of people pictured. You have to decide, based on what they're wearing or holding, what sort of marketing or media would get their attention. You have a choice of social media, print media or television and radio. You have to click on each person and assign the right media to admit them to your show.
At the end, your score is added up, and people come to visit your exhibition. You can then post your scores online or try again to see if you can score higher with another artist.
All in all an engaging game, full of useful information about the artist and the roles of museum staff, as well as helping you to think about what goes into building an exhibition.
Posted on September 14th 2011 on 05:58pm
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