Members event (Roy Voss in Conversation at Matt's Gallery) 2008

 

The Artist Membership was established in 2009 to bring artists closer to the mission of the Contemporary Art Society.

For 100 years The Society has been acquiring works from artists and distributing them to public collections where they are enjoyed by a large and diverse audience. In the year just prior to the centenary, it felt more than timely to offer artists greater access to our work and our networks.

 

The aim of the membership is to:

- Provide greater visibility for artists and their work, particularly those who do not already have gallery representation.

- Bring artists closer to the opportunities and challenges that public collections can offer.

- Bring audiences, including collectors, closer to the work of artists.

Events:

Whilst artists can attend many events devised for our members the Contemporary Art Society will initiate some events throughout the year that will be specifically for Artist Members. This will include one annual lecture and a summer social event where artists can meet our Collector Members and Patrons.

Selection:
Artist Membership is by invitation. Initially artists who have been involved with the most recent ARTfutures have been invited. From January 2010 only artists who have worked with the Contemporary Art Society on the programmes will be eligible.

The Process:
An artist will be proposed at an internal meeting by a staff member and a decision will be made to offer an invitation. The decision will be based on the following:

• what can the Contemporary Art Society can offer the artist
• what that artist may be able to offer the existing Artist Membership

Our aim is to form the Membership in such a way that will create a collegiate and self supporting network.

We are aware of how important ARTfutures was as an initiative developed over several years. Many of the values of ARTfutures remain close to our programming aims and we will be devising a new model that acts as a development to this very valuable aspect of our work with artists and collections.

Annual Artist Membership costs just £25 to cover website administration. We are currently developing this scheme and more information on this new model will be circulated as we progress our ideas.

For further details please contact Phil at phil@contemporaryartsociety.org