As galleries all over the UK closed their doors because of Coronavirus, the art sector was forced to think outside the box when it came to keeping their work visible. The Saatchi Gallery in London was no exception and used this time to let their followers participate in their exhibitions.
As part of their 35th anniversary, the Saatchi Gallery launched #Saatchitakeover that meant that social media users across the world could submit their work to be exhibited online.
It was announced on March 21st 2020, that competitors had to:
- Follow the weekly theme given by the gallery
- Stay at home to make their work
- Post their work on social media, using the hashtag #Saatchitakeover
There were many interesting themes to keep us entertained during lockdown such as paper creations, shadows, and cartography (art using maps).
The chosen works were published on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook on Saturdays. Also, the tagline for the #Saatchitakeover was ‘open to everyone, everywhere’, which suggests that Saatchi wanted a range of active participants.
It is interesting to consider the fact that work by the public and work by established artists were posted side by side and this could be seen as blurring the lines between amateur and professional work. As someone who loves an underdog, I would hope that amateur work will earn more respect because of projects like #Saatchitakeover.
Digital Disruption and the ‘Prosumer’
Typically, mission and vision statements in the arts sector mention an aim similar to ‘nurture a sense of belonging, cohesion, identity and pride’. It’s clear that the #Saatchitakeover goes together with this aim and creates a sense of community, something that is all the more needed in a time of digital disruption.
The ‘prosumer’ is a term that combines the ‘producer’ and the ‘costumer’. The customer in this case isn’t what we would traditionally think of as a customer because viewing the online content on social media is free. Still, the traffic generated towards Saatchi Gallery’s social media pages as a result of the #Saatchitakeover, means that the gallery is more likely to receive donations and that the public are more likely to buy tickets to future exhibitions.
By creating content for the #Saatchitakeover, the consumer also becomes a creator and so they can be considered ‘prosumers’ to a degree.
Charlie Leadbeater points out that art can be traditionally thought of as a very solitude subject but he expects that in the century to come art will experiment more with the idea that art should ‘combine and connect’:
‘The web will encourage a culture in which art creates relationships and promotes interaction, encourages people to be a part of the work, if only in a small way’
Obviously more people have access to the work through social media and discussions about the art are able to be had in the comment section by people from across the world, as demonstrated by the #Saatchitakeover.
The value of this kind of participation in the art sector has been recognised long before the technology of social media was available to us. In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin wrote about how art was better the more it encouraged people to leave behind their passive role as spectator.
As the #Saatchitakeeover tagline ‘open to everyone, everywhere’ suggests, we could see a lot more digital creativity, consumer participation and user-creativity in the art sector in the future. This could also lead to even better art than we have today.
CREATIVE CONVERSATION 