Press coverage of Your Gallery

I worked with Charles Saatchi at the Saatchi Gallery in the middle part of 2006 to facilitate IT solutions to his emerging business ideas.

Background

Without doubt, the highlight in increasing interest and popularity in the Saatchi Gallery website in 2006 was the creation of a space for all artists (whether good or bad - there isn't any favouritism going on) to exhibit their work on the Gallery website. The project is called Your Gallery and is a collection of applications in true Web 2.0 social networking status :

• Your Gallery - showcase your art to thousands of visitors every day - an application for any artist to instantly create their own profile page on the Saatchi Gallery website to exhibit their art and to promote themselves;
• Blog On with News, Views, Reviews, Diaries, Events, Video & Photo-journals - read official Gallery posts along with viewing and contributing with your very own posts with content, images and video;
• Meet Other People Who Like Art - another application to instantly create a profile to participate in meeting other people interested in art;
• Chat Live - chat to others online (without the need to register or to download add-ins).

Arguably, Charles is the first person with his notoriety in UK art to obtain Web 2.0 status. I am proud my involvement made that idea a reality.

The popularity of Your Gallery has grown enormously since launch: receiving over 1.5million hits a day and growing with 20,000+ registered artists, as well as receiving plenty of press coverage (see below). Since May, Charles has continued to expand the original applications with services for galleries, dealers, students (called STUART) and even a kids area named ARTROOM for kids to create their own art online.

Press coverage

The vast majority of the press Your Gallery has received has been mostly positive. However, with its popularity comes its critics too, but this is largely due to Chalres' notoriety and, perhaps, with what the Your Gallery attains - cutting out the middle man (agents/galleries).

One of the larger press opportunities was with the Gallery joining with The Guardian newspaper whcih ran a competition for readers to vote for their favourite Your Gallery artists. The short listed artists were then exhibited at the Guardian's art space in October 2006.  Visit the Guardian site about the exhibition. . The following summarizes just some of the press coverage.

A selection of coverage in newspapers / TV

• 24 December 2006, The Sunday Times
• 18 December, "I Like Ur Art: Saatchi Creates an Online Hangout for Artists" from New York Times (requires registration/subscription)
• 30 November, The Independent
• 19 October 2006, The Guardian, G2 Arts Special 'Alive & Kicking'
• 6 September 2006, discussed in a rare interview with my former boss, Charles Saatchi
• May 2006, video item on More 4 evening news
• A selection of scanned newspaper cuttings in May/June 2006 (view as a PDF)
• Washington Post , Wall Street Journal , New York Times , All Headline News , Cape Times , The Age

A selection of links across the web

• 2 May 2006, No.1 placement on Google News
• 2 May 2006, BBC Arts home page
• 28 April 2006, BBC News Saatchi scours web for art talent
• Your Gallery entry on Wikipedia 
• Use Google's search for other Your Gallery related sites

on major Blog sites

• 15 November 2006, Blog on - Critics Choice & Weekly Top Ten Archive
• 24 October 2006, Art News Blog Saatchi's Online Gallery Top Ten Artists
• 19 October 2006, The Guardian's Culture Vulture Blog
• 9 June 2006, DeviantART's Blog Your Gallery puts your artwork in the limelight

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