Celia Lendis – celialendis.com

This was our first year at Olympia and the experience was both less and more rewarding than I had expected. We were introducing work by a number of fairly high profile contemporary painters, but all unknown in London and so were hoping to be the ‘baby’ in the new Contemporary section – and contribute freshness to an audience largely brought by bigger galleries based in London.

This was not the case and we found that while the response to our work was fantastic, there was not the critical mass of contemporary or big name galleries at the Fair to bring in the audience we needed. While Mayoral Galleries had some big name artists, they did not have a local audience either. The audience that did attend seemed, for the most part, to be ‘regulars’ and old clients. There were some comments that the Fair began brightly and then seemed to disappear into the gloom as you headed towards the back end – maybe mixing the stands up might be worth considering?

We made good sales in the early days, but also feel that the Fair was too long. The programme of tours and lectures could have been much more substantial and we received many comments from local people that they had ‘stumbled’ on the Fair and had not known it was on. Our three large sales all went to people who could walk the paintings home to their houses. None of them had seen any local advertising. Why are banners not hung on the poles?

I appreciate that this Fair has had many issues over the last few years – none of which I was actually aware of until I arrived, so I am not sure that I should congratulate or praise the organisers for ‘improvements’. Rather, if I consider whether or not the Fair represented good value for money and met my expectations in terms of marketing, sales and raising public profile, then I am afraid that I am leaning towards a ‘no’. If I could put that same amount of money and effort into sales and raising profile that I paid to Olympia, then, sadly, I know I could have achieved a better outcome elsewhere.

Having said that, I am still excited about the idea of giving Olympia another year – but this time I will be looking far more carefully at the marketing strategy, commitment to securing contemporary galleries, advertising spend and planning for the event.