How do most artists actually make a living?
Beyond the blue-chip names, the vast majority of artists aren’t bringing in much cash from sales. So what are their alternative funding streams? By Louise Benson
‘I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists,’ Marcel Duchamp famously said. But what exactly does it mean to make a life – and a living – as an artist today? While a privileged few can expect to earn six figures or more through the commercial art market, the reality is vastly different for the majority, many of whom struggle to gain access not only to affordable studio space but also to exhibition fees amounting to above the minimum wage. Artists in the UK can expect to earn a median hourly rate of just £2.60 for their artistic labour, according to recent findings by research group Industria. ‘“How does the artist come to be?” is really a question about material conditions,’ writes Lola Olafemi in the accompanying report, published in 2023. ‘Namely, what social, political and economic environment does art arise from and how does it develop in relation to unfolding historical processes?’
Artists who find themselves working largely outside the market – especially those with typically non-commercial practices such as performance, digital media and installation art – must seek alternative methods of funding to survive. Many find regular work by teaching at art schools around the country or through a second job in another field entirely, balancing this alongside their artistic practice in order to make ends meet. Residencies, grants, prizes and public funding are also available, but the field is fiercely competitive and cuts to government funding has only made access to them even more challenging. The network of opportunities can create a feedback loop whereby only a select few who have already been awarded these opportunities early on continue to make gains, while others fail to break into the system at all.
Harold Offeh, a Cambridge-based artist working in a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice, argues that the ‘ecology’ of support available to artists is guided largely by how they choose to define themselves. Artists can consider wider frameworks in which their work could feature, he suggests, such as sexuality, race, nationality or politics: ‘You can define your own work and strategise around it, which gives you some agency.’ He explains that there are networks which can offer support to artists who sit outside the commercial economy; in his case, Autograph, founded to support Black photographers, and Gasworks, who offer affordable studio space to artists. ‘I was fortunate because I went through the pathway of open submission for [the annual exhibition for emerging artists] New Contemporaries, which helped to give me early visibility,’ he adds.
Offeh has taught in London at Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Art, and he is currently a tutor in MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art. ‘I very much see teaching as part of my practice,’ he says. ‘I’m interested in pedagogy and strategies of learning, and the politics and dynamics of learning. It also means that my work is constantly challenged. Even if I didn’t have to teach, I would still choose to.’ He admits that his relationship to education differs from some of his peers, for whom teaching has a more pragmatic economic role and allows them to support themselves and their creative practice. ‘It is a mixed landscape but I believe in a diversity of relationships to the teaching model.’
Diana Ibanez Lopez, who leads the MA Cities programme at Central Saint Martins, encourages students to think about how public space can be shaped in partnership with artists, in community-led projects. Ibanez Lopez previously worked as a senior curator and co-artistic director at Create. She oversaw a major community-focused public art commission on the Becontree estate, the largest council housing estate in Britain, and led the development of A House For Artists, a new affordable housing model in which artists were invited to deliver free creative programmes for the local neighbourhood in exchange for reduced rent. What can programmes like these offer to artists seeking alternative ways of making a living? ‘I’m cautious to list a lot of really positive things because I think they can also offer disillusion and exhaustion. It can be a surprise that working in public or working in community isn’t immediately heartwarming,’ she says.
Nonetheless, these kinds of projects, which often receive local authority support and National Lottery funding, can have a far-reaching longer-term impact. ‘It's about collaboration, it's about production, and you get to learn different registers and ways of speaking about art which may not be present in a school or in a gallery context,’ Ibanez Lopez explains. ‘You begin to think about how artistic practice or process, and not necessarily artistic products, can contribute to public good.’ The methods of working prompted by these projects shift the focus from the cult of the individual artist and towards collaboration. Working as a collective can make it easier to secure public funding, Lopez points out, particularly with projects that offer multiple ways of working that extend into the local community, demonstrating how art can be used to bring about real change within their environment. ‘Some artists do incredibly well by working with, say, a craft network in a particular setting and shifting how they might produce a piece. Rather than creating work for a gallery, they might create a playground, an archway or a piece of public furniture.’
Residencies are another option for artists looking to develop their practice away from the pressures of the commercial cycle. However extended periods away, especially for international residencies, present challenges to those who also hold a regular job alongside their creative practice, or for those who have a family or a long-term illness. At Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire, flexible artist residencies have been at the heart of their programme for over 30 years, with an unusual remit: participants are not required to produce anything during their time in residence at all. ‘Wysing offers artists time and space outside the pressures of daily life, and outside the exhausting cycle of production, with a financial bursary attached,’ the institution’s director, Rosie Cooper, says. ‘Many have told us that time at Wysing is when their best ideas emerge. All artists need this, regardless of their practice.’ She adds: ‘I think it's important to say that a majority of artists are finding it incredibly difficult to make a living, whichever model they end up being most reliant on. Everyone who is responsible for artist pay and working conditions needs to be accountable.’
Cooper emphasises the remarkable resourcefulness of artists, but argues that this shouldn’t be the norm in order to survive. ‘During Covid lockdowns, when so many artists’ contracts were cancelled, and temporary jobs suspended, many groups of artists formed to share public funding they had received as individuals. This was about responding to an impossible circumstance, and it showed that the system is broken,’ she says. Like Ibanez Lopez, Cooper is interested in alternative methods of organising collectively, but remains concerned at the slow pace of change in the industry amidst rising rents and the spiralling cost of living.
For many artists, the ability to believe in their own work as a commercial enterprise is crucial to building relationships with commercial galleries. Gallerist Freddie Powell runs Ginny on Frederick, a tiny exhibition space in a former sandwich bar that sits in the shadow of London’s Smithfield meat market. He champions emerging artists whose work might not be seen as straightforwardly commercial, and has staged everything from performance art to ephemeral installation. ‘Once artists find the stability that an affordable studio provides, they can get to a place in their work that allows them to even start thinking about doing a show.’ he says. ‘And then I think it’s on the gallerist to be able to balance a programme that can continue to support work that might be challenging to the standard collector.’
Powell views his relationships with artists in the long term, providing support and an artist fee to cover the costs involved with putting together an exhibition. ‘I don’t ever advocate for an artist to make work for the market. My aim is to figure out a sustainable practice with artists.’ This can involve working with a performance artist to create additional elements for the gallery to sell or monetise, or even selling tickets for performances in a model borrowed from the music and theatre industry. ‘Selling performance or ephemeral work is always challenging at every level, whether you’re an emerging or a blue-chip gallery,’ he admits. ‘But it’s crucial to be able to support artists who work in that way. It also benefits the gallery by developing a wider commercial and critical audience. It diversifies the programme.’
The challenge for many artists remains the question of how to survive for long enough to get their foot on even the first rung of the ladder. It is a dilemma that has historically led to an overrepresentation in the arts of those with independent sources of wealth and income, and is a structural issue that cannot be resolved by the resourcefulness and economising of artists alone. Instead, galleries, institutions and public funding bodies must commit to change – not only by fundamentally rethinking their ways of working, but simply in their openness to risk and the unknown. ‘Working with these artists allows you to have conversations that can happen not only in different mediums but in different mindsets. That’s what a gallery should be doing,’ Powell concludes. Until artists are fully valued for the work that they do, the cultural landscape will remain vastly inequitable. If this does not change, there will be few artists left to believe in at all.
Louise Benson is Director of Digital at ArtReview.