There's a dream a lot of us have. It's sourced, mainly, from Instagram. A light-filled, white-walled studio apartment, full of books and bright green monsteras. And art—walls and walls of it, canvases even leaning against the walls because you haven't got around to hanging all of them yet.But to own art you need a house to put it in, a substantial income to pay for it. Time to spend wandering galleries and art fairs, networking with gallerists and meeting artists. Art is for the rich, the middle aged, and the upper class.
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Or is it? In a lot of ways, the art world is more accessible than it has ever been. Small galleries and artist run initiatives are popping up all over the country, and social media is allowing emerging artists to bypass the representation process altogether and interact directly with buyers.VICE asked some experts how young people can navigate all this, and start building up their art collection on a shoestring.Why spend your money on art? It's ostensibly a luxury item in a world where many people can barely afford to pay for life's necessities. On the other hand, you deserve to own something beautiful. And artists deserve to earn money for making something beautiful.Barry Keldoulis, the director of Australia's largest art fair Sydney Contemporary, says that buying art is more community-minded than you think. "Having a lot of art in the house, I always draw pleasure from it. But also I'm supporting the growth and development of our culture in the direction that I find personally rewarding," he explains.Sure, you can buy a black and white print of the New York City skyline from IKEA and pop it up in your lounge room for $20. But who benefits from that transaction? Definitely not you, for starters. That shit is ugly. Also, paying a bit more money to support a local artist makes a difference—and not just to your interior decor scheme."Although artists can get grants from the government or win prizes, that is a very small percentage of them, and it's not a sustainable income. The best way that an artist can be supported is through the sale of their work—and it's not just the money side of it, there is a validation in selling work where the artist knows that what they spend their time doing is appreciated by someone else enough for them to spend their hard earned dollars on it," Keldoulis says.
OWNING ART
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"Really it's a way of supporting our culture. And perhaps the best and most rewarding way of supporting it."Okay, that's all well and good. But contemporary art can be expensive, to compensate for the hours and hours of work it has required. And for young people, money is the biggest barrier to entering the art world. How can we get around that?One solution is Art Money. It's an instant, interest-free loan specifically for contemporary art. You can borrow between $675 and $50,000 then pay the money off in ten installments. Art Money loans are available at pretty much every commercial gallery and art fair you can think of, and they're designed with young, first-time buyers in mind."It was founded from a belief that people really do want to engage with art but don't know where to start—the art world can be intimidating," Art Money founder and CEO Paul Becker explains. "30 percent of our buyers are purchasing their first artwork."Keldoulis encourages visitors at Sydney Contemporary to check out Art Money before they go to the fair. "You can actually get a pre-approved amount and go into it knowing how much you can spend," he explains. "It's such a wonderful recent invention, and you can even use it to buy something from an international artist. In the past with international galleries, to get something on lay-by was very difficult… But with Art Money you can buy the work and take it away immediately."
PAYING FOR ART
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He also notes that young buyers shouldn't be discouraged by the more expensive works on offer—plenty of the art on sale is priced under $2000.
WHAT TO BUY
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