Laura Brinin is back on the podcast, and today we're talking about mentoring. Laura is a curator and arts administrator, and one half of Side Gallery in Brisbane, and she also works at a university art gallery and does professional development with artists.

We talk about whether Laura had a mentor herself, and the piece of advice she got early on that she now thinks was the best bad advice she's ever received. We chat about how to know when you're actually ready for mentoring versus when you think you need it, and why finding the right mentor matters. We get into the difference between mentoring and just getting feedback on your work, and whether mentoring should come through your gallery or sit outside of it.

Laura talks through a couple of mentoring myths, what her own process actually looks like, and a mistake she sees a lot in early-career artists around niching down too soon. We also talk about finding your community, how she likes to run a group critique, what to do if your work starts looking too similar to someone else's, and how mentoring is usually structured in terms of frequency and length.

• Laura Brinin @laura__who
• Side Gallery, Brisbane sidegallery.com.au
• Dunedin Public Art Gallery

You can find the podcast here on Instagram & here on Substack

If you're interested in a video of this episode- you can find it on the Substack or on Youtube

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This week I chat with Nick Smith, founder and director of N. Smith Gallery in Sydney to talk about what gallery representation looks like; What does a gallery really do? How do they decide who to work with? And what makes a gallery relationship successful over the long term?

Since opening in 2021, Nick has built a gallery that represents 26 artists across Australia while exhibiting internationally through museums, art fairs and major projects.We talked about what representation means beyond simply hanging work on a wall. Nick shares how his team supports artists through pricing, museum relationships, public art commissions, publications, marketing and career planning.

We also discuss what artists often misunderstand about representation, some of the ways artists can approach a gallery, what to include in an email and how artists living outside major cities can still get noticed.

We also dive into international art fairs, the realities of running a commercial gallery, what happens when an artist's career plateaus, and why timing, trust and honest conversations are so important.

One of the things I appreciated most about this conversation was Nick's willingness to talk about the relationship between artist and gallery as exactly that: a relationship. It's built over years, evolves over time, and works best when both sides communicate openly about their ambitions, expectations and challenges.

You can find N.Smith Gallery at nsmithgallery.com and on Instagram at @n.smithgallery and @nw.smith

Find the Art Wank Episode with Nick here

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In this episode I sit down with Rachael Parsons, Director of the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM), to talk about copying and copyright in visual art. We trace copying's long history as a teaching tool and talk about the point where it tips over into forgery or passing someone else's work off as your own. Rachael breaks down what copyright law actually protects (a specific artwork) versus what it doesn't (style, colour palette, subject matter).

We discuss how a reputation for derivative work can affect an artist's exhibition and grant opportunities & what artists can actually do if they think they've been copied. Rachael talks about some of the bigger historical cases of mass forgery & we also touch on the impact of AI in this matter- how training data complicates copyright, why some art prizes now have no-AI policies, and whether AI-generated art will end up as its own category altogether.

Links mentioned:

Find Rachael Parsons here on Instagram, and here at NERAM

• NERAM: https://www.neram.com.au
• Tamworth Regional Gallery here on instagram and here https://tamworthregionalgallery.com.au

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