James Gardner

During this weeks Wednesday lecture, successful Gallery owner James Gardner visited the university to give a presentation on this life's work so far. Gardner was born in Aberdeen, as he was growing up he had no experience of galleries or museums until he moved to London as a young adult. In 2012 James moved to Rome, Italy and opened the Frutta Gallery with the use of his life's savings so this seemed a very large risk to his friends and family around him. Rome was his firm choice as he had always seen it as a hub for new and exciting artworks to flourish, he wanted to do the same as a gallery owner and art dealer to help upcoming and existing artists expand their horizons. His aim for the Frutta Gallery was for people to change their perspectives and react to new things, Throughout the past 7 years Gardner has worked with countless artists, including a special show with a high end magazine in 2015, during this show James explained Interaction was key he had to focus particularly on the aesthetics of the gallery space in order to entice the magazines representatives. During his career he has curated the extraordinary, unusual objects in order to set his gallery apart from others, these items consist of oversized baskets, curtains, floating pictures and even a banana incapsulated inside of cement.

 He went into specific detail into how he doesn't always enjoy and approve of everything that is on show within his gallery but has to accept this due to differences in taste amongst the public. Due to the popularity of the Frutta gallery branch in Rome, he opened a space back in his home town of Aberdeen. Although the success of his galleries is demanding as he is always looking for new spaces to exhibit work, he admitted that he preferred it when he was forced to work in much smaller spaces as it felt more intimate as he could have in-depth conversations with the public. I found his presentation extremely informative as he shared detailed responses to each artist he had work with in the past, he spoke passionately about each artist as a friend and not just a client. From this lecture it was clear that that James is an extremely dedicated gallery owner and clearly loves his job, he made a clear point that he does not work with artists simply to make a profit, he works with them to incorporate his space into different works of art to create a bio-product of the space.