What does it mean to have an ‘audience’?

What it means to have an audience has changed because of the relationship dynamics and ways of connecting that social media has made possible. The same relationships that used to be built and maintained on behalf of artists by galleries and affiliated organisations and were, for all intents and purposes at arms’ reach, are now cultivated directly by the artist. Gallery representatives do not have the same influence over art patron’s purchasing decisions or whose artwork is promoted. Those who appreciate art and creative works are now empowered to seek out talent online and can decide which artists they want to follow, buy from, and support in a variety of ways.

By that same token, artists can now brand themselves to the public, build their own following, oversee the pricing of their work, negotiate directly with potential buyers, and even discuss what they will create for potential buyers. In the past, when artists wanted to create pieces and sell them in the art market, they had to focus on the types of art that galleries would appreciate and be willing to physically present and promote it during exhibitions. Nowadays, artists have more power to decide their style, whether they want to

establish their career through social media and online platforms, and focus on their social media audience’s interests.

Although the artists I interviewed appreciated the opportunities crowdfunding platforms opened up for them to showcase and fund their work – empowering them to pursue non-traditional art careers – they also expressed frustration over the challenges they encountered finding and building relationships with potential audience members. When I asked her to reflect upon how she felt during the launch of her first Kickstarter campaign, Lucy Sparrow remarked

it feels like you don’t know until you put your work out there… You have no idea how many people are out there looking at it. Since I last looked, Kickstarter has an audience of like 3 million people, and it’s almost as much of a social platform as Facebook. And they’ve even got their own forums and places to discuss projects. So it’s a social media thing but just with a bit of a different focus.

Indeed, the role of the audience is an important issue for businesses that rely on social media for growth and reach. Giblin’s audience circles – which she worked on during the RAINBOW analysis component of our interview – revealed that she is highly active on social media platforms precisely because she recognises their value for her Kickstarter campaigns. Even so, she took a balanced approach, in that she had a presence but preferred to keep her personal life private. In Giblin’s words,

It is cool that you are interested but I don’t care too much. I never put much pressure on it. I think I care less than other people do about their fans [audience]… My sister [who also has a campaign] will write back to every single review or comment, and she is very dedicated to thinking about her followers and her customers. I do not think about my followers very much. Hence, even though Giblin understood the opportunity to reach and make a strong impression on her ‘imagined audience’ through tailored social media strategies (Litt, 2011), she did not want it to influence her work. To the contrary, Giblin preferred to grow her ‘actual’

audience at the grass-roots level. Her audience circles revealed: ‘I want galleries and curators to know about me and support my artwork… and I can get inspiration… they will inspire me to make new artwork and we will encourage each other’.

Albrecht’s attitude towards her audience was largely informed by her previous professional experience in fashion design. She shared:

when I was working as a tailor… I felt actually quite neutral about them

[customers]… When I was a craftsperson, I didn’t care about them… When I was a designer, I became more critical of people who buy fashion… When I think about my current audience, I think I want to reach people or provoke them.

Despite the fact that Albrecht was keen to reach and provoke her audience, she was unclear about where and how to locate them. She explained

when I did my Kickstarter campaign, I linked everything I had… I was looking for a bigger audience for my art… I sent emails to all of my friends... I linked Kickstarter to all of my platforms. At that time, to be honest, most of my audience were my friends and family.

Albrecht then offered a deeper analysis, suggesting that the main difficulty artists confront is learning how to grow their audience. It is not enough to just link all of the platforms with the art, she suggested. Having a clear communications strategy goes a long way, and is not something most artists know how to develop or have the financial means to pay for.

When I asked Davies to reflect upon her Kickstarter experiences, she told me that doing a crowdfunding project is more interesting than other types of funding, because you can get more people involved in your art or project… The difficulty is that, for example, there are around 8.7 million people in London, so it looks like we can draw enough audience members to our campaign. But it is actually very difficult to connect and bring everybody together to enjoy our campaigns.

Although it is a shared challenge among artists to develop good relationships with their audience members, the salient point is that it helps artists to succeed when they know

instance, apart from stocking The Corner Shop with everyday items made out of felt,

Sparrow tried to explore serious issues through her art. As noted in the previous chapter, she opened a sex shop filled with felt items in Soho, New York to voice serious issues she saw in the sex industry. Through this experience, Sparrow has confronted her imagined audience and her real audience, and her online and physical shops now include felt guns and other weapons.

All of the artists I interviewed said that their perceptions of, and direct

communications with, their audience members have influenced their artwork and creative processes. Even though artists who have virtual businesses cannot know exactly where their audience is located, they can still influence their artwork. To illustrate this point, Bowell said that

I’m pretty sure that my audience does influence me. I like to make art that people like. I really, really, enjoy it when people appreciate my art. If I make one piece and a lot of people interact with that and tell me that they like it, I maybe try to repeat whatever it is they liked… not necessarily to make the same picture again, but repeat whatever elements I think made the audience interact with my art. I think my ideal audience, or client, or customer, is somebody who can take ownership, not just of a piece of art, but of the whole thing, of my story, a bit of it resonating with them, a bit connecting with them.

Similarly, Emily Brown suggested it is necessary to guess what the audience will like in order to anticipate what they will be willing to support. In her own words,

I do guess what my audience wants. It is important to be able to work out how you can give them something they really want – to tailor to what they want. I have opportunities to do some experiments, and if they don’t like them, I have to work on and improve what I’m developing. For example, I will ask them [a client], “Do you want this one or do you want me to do it again?” Trying to make it match their interests as much as possible.

Even though creators now have more access to their audience members and opportunities for interaction, compromising what they want to create versus what their audience prefers for them to create is not always easy for them. For example, during my

interview with Kelly Sweeney, she said ‘I think, for me as an artist, again, it seems like a very business-related question that I don’t really feel is something that I think about, or want to think about for my work’. For Driver, an audience is ‘integrated’. By this, he meant ‘my art practice and my life are the same thing. People that I’m connected to on social media, I don’t see them as the audience for my art practice. I see them as people I am interested in or even my friends’.

Bowell viewed Facebook as key to attracting her audience.

Facebook is where I actually get customers. On Facebook, I try to be more personal and write something about what I am doing and things like that, and people do react to that. For example, when I create an event on Facebook, I know how many people I am inviting, and after the exhibition it is easy to keep in touch with the customers who came to my exhibition. They may ask me about my work. This is why I am very, very active on Facebook. Perhaps too much sometimes... it takes up half of my time.

Overall, the artists I spoke with were either close to their imagined social media audience or kept at a distance from them. These attitudes, in turn, had a direct impact on how they participated and engaged in social media spaces, and how they related to their creative works. Generally speaking, when artists use social media, they are closer to their audience and are thereby more influenced by them.