QUEEN’S ROAD: Bengaluru art galleries are not only going online but are also going the extra mile to reach out to new buyers.
While online stores make art more accessible, many buyers on the Net are unfamiliar with the artists and the gallery. So the galleries offer advice on what to buy.
Art can be a great conversation starter so long as you don’t feel diffident talking about it. And many people do, says Padmaja Nagarur, who heads the marketing division of Artflute on Bannerghatta Road.
Artflute has an online circulating library for businesses. "This has worked in the hospitality sector where people want to keep refreshing the décor, and adding different works of art,” she explains.
So, for an annual subscription, clients can display paintings by different artists every few months.
Artflute aims, like a couple of other galleries in the city, to see artworks in every living and working space. So they would like to see more people buying art for their homes as well.
Both Artflute and Mahua, with galleries in Sadashivanagar and at the Leela Promenade, offer prints of original works to make art more accessible to the individual buyer.
Mahua, through an initiative it calls Art Collective, sells life-size reproductions in HD prints in a range of `3,000 to `20,000.
“This took off because we realised that there was a segment of people who would like to buy Indian art but can’t afford it. Our material is shipped here from Germany, and even the artists with us are amazed at the quality of the product. And for online orders, we also have the cash on delivery option,” says co-founder of Art Collective Amit Jaipuria.
The collective currently has about 120 artists on board and features around 800 works.
Artflute has brought in the concept of limited edition prints that range between `11,000 and `25,000. “Art is an investment, and first-time buyers might be unsure of making a huge investment. So we have 100 reproductions of a few select artists which are hand-textured,” she says, adding that she and her colleagues hope buyers will graduate to originals after they develop their individual taste for art.
Since Padmaja and the rest of the team at Artflute have realised that first-time buyers would like to see the works before they buy it, they are setting up what they call ‘experience centres.’
“They are usually home stores, where people come to buy furniture and the like for their houses,” Padmaja adds.
Kynkyny sells art as well as home furnishings through its website and a gallery on Infantry Road, and Anishaa Tarapovala, who handles communication there, says she has noticed that people who come to buy furniture sometimes end up buying art.
“If you have a painting hanging by the bed, it also helps people visualise whether a particular work of art goes with certain colours or looks,” she says. “The idea is to make it unpretentious so that people visiting for the first time don’t feel intimidated.”Art clicks
www.artflute.com.
www.mahuagallery.com or
www.artcollective.com,
www.kynkyny.com
You can sign up for the circulating library on the Artflute website