Dear Artist,
Thank you for your recent entry to the Aberdeen Artists Society Coming Home exhibition. We are writing to update you on the exhibition and sales processes.
First of all, the Society sends a huge thank you to everyone who has submitted work. The response to the Call for Works has been fantastic with over 600 entries received from around the world. The COVID19 pandemic may have put paid to the AAS’s expected return to the Aberdeen Art Gallery this year, however the response, and especially the quality of the works submitted by you all has, as a Council member put it: “ …provided a fizz to the “buzz” of reinstating AAS in the Art Calendar…”. We are confident that with the high number of quality of works submitted that we shall be able to put together an excellent online show of artwork.
The large number of works and the unexpected international spread of entries has however, meant that we have had to alter the way in which work will be sold from the online gallery. Our original sales process was that all sales would be conducted through the AAS with artists arranging delivery with buyers. The potential logistical issues raised by the response to the Call however, has required us to change this and now any sales will be arranged directly between the buyer and the artist. The role of the Society will be limited to introducing potential buyers to the artist. The Society will be the point of contact for email enquiries about artists and art works and we will introduce buyers to the artist by email (whilst remaining compliant with GDPR (data protection) rules) with the artist and buyer concluding the sale directly.
Because the AAS will not be transacting the sale, we think it only fair that you should pay no commission if you are successful in your sale, so you will keep 100% of the sales price. Note that Aberdeen Artists Society is an artist-led, self-funded organisation and any donations you may see fit to give to the Society out of the proceeds of a sale would be very welcome and used to benefit artists in North East Scotland.
The final piece of news is that the Aberdeen Art Gallery (AAG) has advised us that there is no possibility of holding the exhibition in their Gallery at any time this year and therefore we have to confirm that the show will be online only in 2020. Despite this development our Selection and Hanging Teams are working diligently with Int-Tech the website developer, to present your work at its best in an online gallery setting. Aberdeen Art Gallery have confirmed that they will continue to support the Society and the exhibition with publicity, and we will be publicising the exhibition on our social media channels and via OESS to give the widest possible exposure of your work. AAG have also confirmed AAS are in their plans for a major exhibition in the gallery in 2022 when hopefully things will have returned to normal.
We hope that these changes to the exhibition, which are the result of a rapidly evolving situation prompted by our move online, are not too inconvenient to you and we look forward to presenting your work in the exhibition which opens online on 20th June.
Aberdeen Artists Society