My work, reasons behind it and what happens to it.

ALL publicity is good publicity. Or so they say.

I’ve been contemplating the effectiveness of various forms of marketing this week.

As this present exhibition of mine was a last minute decision, I missed the deadline for the Independents brochure, so my installation doesn’t appear in it. Obviously, as I’d put so much effort into it, I wanted people to not only see my work, but hopefully give some feedback

I don’t usually bother with business cards, as I generally haven’t found them that useful. If I was in the selling market, it may be a different story, but for the type of work I do, they haven’t worked.

Despite this, I took up the most recent vistaprint offer and had 250 cards printed ( with an image of my work on both sides) for £9, inc P + P.

The only way I can judge the effectiveness of them is whether someone contacts me ( zero response so far) or the amount of direct hits my website has had ( 60% of the hits were direct, but I’ve no way of knowing if that was a response to the cards or not) I won’t lose any sleep over the £9 just yet.

As with past exhibitions, I’ve sent out press releases, with varying degrees of success ( or not!) I seem to have done a little better this time – though my words have been changed a little. Maybe the trick is to make it more ‘public friendly’ ?

While in work today, I received a call from a local newspaper, who may or may not run a piece on me – but first wanted a little more information. ( obviously, my own press release didn’t cover the type of info they needed!) Being in work though and not really being able to take personal calls, I was talking in a hushed voice and wasn’t sure I was getting my message across. I was beginning to worry about how my words could be misconstrued…… the reporter asked about my job…as ‘ it was important that readers understood what I did’. Why my job matters, is quite odd, but I told her anyway. So – you are not a full time artist? Would you call your work origami? Did you study locally? Do you sell your work? Did you used to paint?

No, No , NO ! to all of the above….well – yes, I did paint at one time, but I have a horrible feeling that my answer came across as me giving up painting as I wasn’t selling and not because my work was evolving. The readers wouldn’t understand that. I think I’ve probably failed the ‘local artist’ test.

As with last weeks questionnaire….here is the result: http://www.sevenstreets.com/liverpoolbiennial/biennial-radar-wendy-williams-journeys-end/

Today, I’ve mostly felt like a monkey in a cage. There’s only one thing worse than invigilating….and that’s sitting in a room with a multitude of noses pressed up to the glass and unblinking eyes staring me out.

Oh actually, there is one more thing worse….letting kids run into the unit and their parents thinking it’s OK for them to grab my work.

But that was really only a very small part of today.

Yesterday, was another story. Our private view at Tate was, for want of a better word – fabulous! I was getting used to the poor attendance at PVs in the last few weeks, so with this in mind, I went out and only bought enough wine and soft drinks for about 25 people. My poor estimation lead to someone running out across the road to the local Tesco for a couple of extra boxes! This isn’t normal Tate policy of course…… they’d given us a room to hang our work in, an adjoining one to lay out the drinks, a couple of staff for security and we were pretty much left to our own devices. To which we are eternally ( well for two weeks ) VERY grateful.

Now I am hungover and tired and not really looking forward to another day in my cage tomorrow.

I’ve just been sent an email in response to a press release I sent recently. To make my blurb sound more interesting (I assume) would I please answer the following questions?

What’s happening?

Why should we come?

What shouldn’t we miss?

Amazing art fact? (In relation to your work, either directly or indirectly)

Any special dates?

Your Biennial in seven words

Just great. As if I can think of any intelligent answers while I’m stressed out about the two exhibition openings (one tonight)

Brilliant that they got back to me though as many press releases just get deleted!

It’s been quite a tough week. With spending so much time installing in the unit on Tuesday, I asked one of the people helping with the other installation at Tate, if they would secure some of my houses on the plinth while I was working on the other exhibition. It was such a simple job, I really thought it could be done by anyone in quite a short time.

Much later that evening though, I got a call saying that my installation ‘was wrecked’. I couldn’t believe it. I think I tossed and turned all night worrying about it, even getting up at one stage to see if I could make a few more houses in the middle of the night.

It took me about an hour to repair it, so it wasn’t too bad, but I did learn a valuable lesson. If you want something doing………….