BIOGRAPHIES: Backgrounds and curatorial experience

FROM AN EARLIER CREATIVE INITIATIVE

Contemporary and Country (C&C), came about after our involvement with an earlier 'grassroots' initiative for creative people that Paul Vater and Paul Barratt contributed to in their capacities as designer and curator. The initiative stemmed from an initial idea by Davina Barber and Emma Deterding, to promote Norfolk creatives that they had commissioned during the course of client projects for their respective interior design businesses, Source and Kelling Design.

THE GERM OF AN IDEA

Paul and Paul helped with the install of the first showcasing event in 2016, and the result was promising. The event's relaxed, informal feel in a converted barn at an idyllic residential retreat in West Lexham encouraged interest from an invited audience of local landowners, creative businesspeople and local collectors. The feedback from the assembled group of furniture makers, illustrators, artists, jewellery designers and makers who took part was positive and they felt it was worth continuing. Paul and Paul decided to pool resources and to work with Davina Barber on several pop-up events from 2017, under the title Norfolk by Design. Each showcase was composed around what would be best suited to each location, whether that was a private house, a country house hotel or an ancient chalk barn. This brief period included putting together a showcase of Norfolk-based creatives at Houghton Hall Stables in 2017. It concluded when Davina Barber moved on to become a fine art dealer in 2019.

RE-BRIEFING

Paul and Paul decided to apply what they had gleaned from the first initiative and progressed the project to the next stage at the beginning of 2020. They cleaned up the brief by determining to promote creatives working throughout East Anglia, rather than restrict their interests to North Norfolk. They also sought out artists and makers with a more innovative approach to their work, selecting high quality applied art to sit comfortably alongside contemporary art. The calibration of the exhibitions developed to include work from a much more diverse group of artists and makers who were from a variety of backgrounds. Paul and Paul also improved the standard of presentation, set themes that are simple for non-art savvy audiences to follow, developed better accompanying texts, clearer more informative wall labels, and considered customer support. They devised marketing campaigns with greater social media impact with longer reach that increased audience numbers. The exhibitions have been held in unusual, architecturally interesting spaces that have piqued the interest of a younger, more visually aware crowd. These changes have encouraged engagement with an audience of supporters, collectors and creative influencers. C&C's commercial ethos switched too. From being led by the interior design commissioning process, Paul and Paul shifted emphasis of the presentations toward contemporary art and craft that appeals to a more diverse audience interested in viewing and buying original work.

RECOGNISING A GAP

This organic development has led to C&C being something of a hybrid organisation, inhabiting the territory of both an artist's group and to a lesser extent, that of a commercial gallery, without really being either. This model seems to work well for artists and makers and has been effective in promoting East Anglian creativity.

There are a couple of membership organisations that promote the visual arts within the region. These function through a combination of publicly funded grant maintained and private sector funding. While well-meaning, they have tended to champion the same artists. More innovative and deserving artists or creatives at different stages in their careers have been consistently overlooked. Lack of visibility for a significant number of professional artists and makers in East Anglia has led collectors to the false impression that work produced within the region is somehow second rate. The situation has been compromising all round, for artists, makers, local collectors, and for audiences too, who were not being well-served. This gap, or oversight, once identified by Paul and Paul was instrumental in how C&C have plotted their course.

C&C'S NEW MODEL

From 2020 onward C&C have put together an ongoing programme of pop-up exhibitions that vary in location size and theme. These have been structured around a common purpose among selected makers and artists. C&C don’t represent artists like a conventional commercial gallery or agent. They work more flexibly with artists and makers, on a project by project basis, promoting what they do from concept to final outcome. They look out for the creative interests of an artist or maker for the duration of a series of exhibitions or for just a single project. How this develops depends upon what each artist feels they need and whether the project theme can provide a context for what they do. The objective of each pop-up is to present different types of art and craft, making connections between their outcomes, within each exhibition. By doing this C&C have taken the best aspects of the original initiative back to the artists and makers, acting as interlocutor, connecting them with an informed local audience, as well as a national one. This has led to what creatives produce in the east of England being seen by more people and has encouraged more sales of original work. The more professionally presented exhibition context provides an increased possibility that their work will be bought, taken home by an audience of art lovers. And for their work to be lived with, enjoyed and appreciated, hopefully for generations to come.