Arts Group

Keen on an international art career? Elise Foster Vander Elst is commercial director of Gallery BMB, India. She tells how she carved a career in the global art world, helping to launch an art space in Mumbai with a debut show featuring contemporary art greats the Chapman brothers, Jon Kessler, Riyas Komu, George Osodi, Tunga and Wang Qingsong.

What’s your background?

After leaving school in the UK, I moved to Paris and completed a BA in history of art at the Sorbonne. I realised I was particularly interested in contemporary art, and decided a great place to learn about it in more depth would be New York, so then I went to the big apple to work at MoMA-PS1 and ArtReview magazine, and loved every minute of it.

I thought it best to have a masters, so returned to Paris to do an MA in contemporary art, where I specialised in performance art.

How did you become involved in launching a gallery in India?

After my Masters I joined a small Parisian gallery, and its director was interested in bringing more Indian art to France. I helped research interesting artists, contact them and plan exhibitions, and was fortunate enough to build good relationships with some brilliant artists.

Then I went to work for a British auction house in Paris. I began to realise that to properly delve into the Indian contemporary art world, I had to be in India. Returning from a holiday in Delhi, I was standing at the luggage carousel of Charles de Gaule airport when Bose Krishnamachari called me to discuss a new gallery he was planning with long-term art patrons Dia and Devaunshi Mehta and Avanti Birla.

What’s been the high point of your work at the BMB so far?

Bringing 39 works, by 7 artists from 5 continents, to Mumbai for The Dark Science of Five Continents exhibition.

Which Indian artists would you particularly recommend?

Where to start? If I had to narrow it down- Prasad Raghavan; Charmi Gada Shah; PS Jalaja’s fresh large scale, beautiful pastel works; Tejal Shah (whose works always keep this incredible balance between being challenging and aesthetically beautiful); Riyas Komu; I adore Bose Krishnamachari’s installations; and Sumedh Rajendran’s solo show was one of the best gallery exhibitions I have ever seen.

What advice would you give to a young person with dreams of an international art career?

Visit every single gallery show in the town where you live. If you are lucky enough to live near museums, go to every exhibition, and if you can afford it and the show was good, buy the catalogue or at the very least take the press release. Read every art magazine you can get your hands on, remember names, be respectful to everyone you meet – but always stand up for yourself. Finally, as unglamorous as it sounds, work really really really hard. It’s the only way.

Image: Gallery BMB, Shankar Natarajan. Courtesy Gallery BMB.

Copyright gives creators of original works (called “copyright works”), such as artwork, illustrations, pieces of writing and even software code, legal rights allowing the creator to stop reproduction of that work by others without the creator’s permission. Copyright does not need to be registered with any Government agency to exist, it exists automatically when an original copyright work is created and the first owner is automatically the creator of that work. The duration of copyright for most types of creative work is 70 years after the death of the original creator.

If copyright exists in a copyright work it is illegal for anyone to make copies of that copyright work without the creator’s permission. It is also illegal for anyone to issuing copies of that copyright work to the public or reproduce it on the Internet (or to broadcast that copyright work if it is music or film) without the permission of the creator, i.e. the original artist or designer.

One issue that is sometimes overlooked is where an artist or a designer is working for someone else when they create copyright works. This will affect ownership. If an artist or designer is employed by a company or other person, then when that artist or designer as an employee creates a new creative work, the copyright in that creative work is automatically owned by the artist or designer’s employer. However, the opposite is the case if the artist or designer is self-employed and working for clients on a freelance basis. In the latter situation, the artist or designer would automatically be the owner of the creative works he or she creates even where the client has instructed them to do it and paid the artist or designer to do the work. Because of this, it is a good idea for all artists/ designers to have a simple agreement for work they do for clients which covers the issue of IPR. This will normally be a Freelancer Agreement.

Whoever is the owner of copyright in creative works, they will be able to give permission to others to use their work commercially (this is called an IPR licence) in return for regular payments (licence fees or royalties) or if a company or person wants to buy copyright in certain creative works outright from the owner for a one off lump sum this can be done by way of an IPR assignment. Both are common in the art and design world. If copyright works are assigned, this will not change the duration of the copyright which will still last until the end of the seventieth year after the death of the original creator, regardless that the original creator no longer owns the copyright because it has been assigned to someone else.

It is worth remembering that copyright does not protect ideas, or such things asnames or subject titles. So, for example, a painting of a still life with a clever theme will not stop other artists staging still life on the same theme and producing paintings of them. The same goes for ideas for creative works; for example, if you write down a summary of an idea for a piece of creative work that you are planning to produce, copyright in that written work will only allow you to stop someone copying the written words, and will not allow you to stop them from producing the envisioned work summarised in writing.

Image by Slaven Gabric, Don’t walk !

Though there have been no major cuts to Arts Council funding just yet, the looming elections are likely to set a new tone.  Much has happened over the past two years to dramatically alter its budget.  In 2007, the Arts Council placed a large chunk of its funding towards the 2012 Olympics. Last year’s recession meant that public sectors faced major setbacks, and the profits made in the arts were significantly reduced.

This all sounds very gloomy, but is it really? The 2009 budget report in April announced it would cut £4 million out of the previous £467 million, decreasing the budget by less than 1%. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which, along with the Arts Lottery, funds the Arts Council has had its own cuts in 2010 of £20million. The Arts Council, therefore will only be bearing a fifth of DCMS’ losses.

Although these cuts are minimal, they do come as a great disappointment. Since 2002, the Arts Council has had yearly increase in funding. That year, a new spending plan was announced that would make the DCMS budget £257 million higher in 2005-06 than in 2002-03. Furthermore in 2007, the Arts Council was promised £20 million over the following three years.

As for prospective cuts, the Arts Council continues to point out that the revenue from the Arts sector is much higher than its spending. In July last year, MP Andy Burnham told the Stage: “the small – relatively small – amount of funding here, produces a huge benefit not [just] socially, educationally, culturally, but also economically.” Indeed, when Liverpool became Europe’s Capital of Culture in 2008, it generated £176 million from tourism alone and an £800 million boost to regional economy.

No doubt 2010 will see a decrease in Arts Council money. Can a new government change this? Or is it dictated by the recession? Predicting the former, Chief of the Arts Council Alan Davey met with the Conservative Party last October to discuss the importance of funding. Like Burnham, he argued that arts revenue was beneficial to the economy. On the opposite side of the spectrum were the conclusions reached at the Funding Transition conference hosted by arts think tank Missions Models Money in December.  Chair of the meeting Clara Miller, CEO of Non-profits Finance Fund, argued that it is the way arts businesses are run that needs to change, rather than government revenue. Can art businesses, as Clara Miller suggests, overcome financial struggle by remodelling?  These are questions organisations, as well as art students and artists, will have to face as we draw closer to a new government and a revision of this year’s budgets.

Words by Lemma Shehadi