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Types of art market

If a market is a location where products and services are sold between sellers and buyers then many markets operate in the art world - there are markets for art as a service eg residencies, workshops and education projects and markets for art as a product eg commissions and the activities of commercial galleries. The most distinct two art markets are probably also the two most easily separated from each other. The ecology of activity which includes Frieze Art Fair (and international equivalents), Venice Biennale (and similar), the collections of major institutions such as Tate or MoMA, and all those artists, gallerists and private collectors who participate in this world, is the contemporary art market. The ecology of activity which connects the work of living artists to those who buy work in galleries, open studios etc, to hang it in their homes and offices, but which does not include the development of the canon, is a somewhat simpler ecology with a model closer to retail - for that reason we'll call it the retail art market.

Contemporary art market

This market is global, has a wide variety of participants from large institutions to individual artists (eg any yBA artist, anyone nominated for the Turner Prize) and collectors such as Anita Zabludovich, Charles Asprey or Charles Saatchi. The motivations and behaviours of different elements of the ecology often seem widely divergent and hard to fathom. On a macro level, however, there is a single common driver - the process of subscription and legitimisation. Subscription is the process by which the varied participants in the contemporary art market contribute to the assessment of not just the artists and art works but also the exhibitions, curators, publications, events etc.

Artists' engagement

If subscription is the process that drives the contemporary art market, how can artists engage with it? The reality is that you will already be engaging with it even if it is not through the sale of work. Every residency, group show, exhibition and review contributes to the process of subscription. When curators choose which residency applications to select, they are choosing which artists to subscribe to and which not. If you can see the threads that connect people beyond their geography and employer, if you can see the hierarchies of institutions and the difference between the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art offering a show in the main gallery and offering an education project, you are seeing subscription at work. So start looking at those networks of who knows who, who works for who, rights for which magazines etc, and start looking at the threads that connect people. Not just in the here and now but also where people worked before; for example, quite a few people now at Tate have worked for the Whitechapel earlier in their careers. Look at those artists doing residencies at Chisenhale or Gasworks and see where they did their earlier residencies. Look at where the curators studied... did they do an RCA curating MA or was it Goldsmiths?

Retail art market

Subscription only operates to a very localised degree in the retail art market. What impacts the market more is the balance between supply and demand. The key therefore is to understand how a buyer chooses and the extent to which this choice is influenced by external factors such as how well they know the artist, what their friends will think, whether the work will fit in their domestic environment, the amount of disposable income they are willing to spend. This is about developing and supporting the confidence of those who collect your work. You can build the confidence of your buyers, for example, by getting to know them personally - inviting them not just to your openings but to your studio so that you know each other beyond the vagaries of the private view. In understanding these drivers, artists can make educated choices about how to mix and match working with galleries (several in different parts of the UK perhaps), the role of open studios and the extent to which they wish to sell directly to individuals. Also think about how much you want to be involved in the selling of work - some artists are happy to do so and therefore retain all the sales price, some prefer to let a gallery do it for them and therefore pay them 30-50% of the sale price.

Art buyers' policies

Whilst corporate and public collections may have a clear buying policy - perhaps buying artists that complement the overall content, or a concentration on buying, for example, pieces in metal in a particular year - individuals do not have such an approach.

As an overview, one comment makes a private buyer's approach to their collection clear, "If other people think that what we are buying is odd, then we know it is right." The financial value of their collection means very little to this couple.

In the Shipley collection, there is some representation by regional makers, but it is very much a national collection and aims to gather the strongest pieces in the UK - excellence is key in the purchasing policy.

There are two aims that the Deutsche Bank collection seeks to achieve. The first is for the most part to purchase works by unknown and young artists; the second is to provide an experience of encountering art for staff of the bank and visitors to the buildings. As curator Mary Findlay says, "We don't buy for the storeroom." An art committee comprising of executives from different departments in the bank such as asset management decide which works will be purchased. There are three or four such meetings annually, where the curators bring in a selection of work - with larger pieces, slides and photographs are provided - and from this group of around twenty works, any number may be bought.

Artist's experience - developing a product

Kim Jenkins' bags developed out of necessity. Living in Spain, Jenkins needed a bag to go shopping - the first one was made from fertiliser sacks with webbing for the handles. From there she was asked to provide something for a 'market' being organised by Gavin Turk as an event outside the Royal Festival Hall. Jenkins and a friend took a hand sewing machine along and made and sold bags on site. They sold a huge amount that day - Jenkins began to think she was onto something.

Jenkins has always enjoyed a non-precious approach to making and would often print from found objects. Since the first bag in 1998, Jenkins' range has altered in appearance, largely because she exhausted her supply of found fabric, the Spanish fertiliser sacks. She now uses potato, carrot and rice sacks as well as mailbags collected by "Norman on Bethnal Green Road". Made in two styles - either courier or shopping - the embroidery of everyday objects such as ladders and hammers unite Jenkins' love of graphics and packaging. After producing the bags for friends Jenkins was approached by the Applied Arts Agency. Through this, she was commissioned by United Arrows, a shop in Japan, to produce 300 bags.

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First published: a-n.co.uk December 2008