Profile Gallery 1.0

It has been a year since we were plunged into isolation and forced to find things to stimulate us and those around us. This is why we created Profile Gallery. Grace, cofounder and Gallery Director at PG, built this first incarnation of our site. We were excited by (and very naive to) the trials of website design and digital curation as well as being able to continue our work together after a year of working alongside each other in an IRL gallery in York. Whilst everyone was stuck to their screens to maintain some sort of normalcy, we wanted to make that time fun and perhaps a bit challenging (hence the colour scheme). Between the two of us we curated 6 spaces over the course of 3 months which featured over 60 early career artists from the UK. We produced two blog posts: one in response to the June BLM protests and a 'humbling' response to the White Pube's shut-down of 2020 grads complaining that their degree shows were cancelled. But we wanted to develop the site further to be able to curate more exhibitions and hold more artists as well as create a discursive space (a webblog) to explore the world of digital art from the perspective of early career creatives. We wanted to reestablish our social media presence, create stronger relationships with our artists, and also build our team base. This first site was the seed which grew our rich understanding of digital curation, policy, marketing (email, socials, SEO), copywriting, UX design, branding, recruiting, online networking, and project management. Looking back on our first site, I feel so much nostalgia for the energy (and naivety) we had in building this small organisation. Grace and I have learnt an incredible deal in the last year and we have met some brilliant early career creatives who constantly push us to do better for ourselves and for PG. As it comes to a year of being intermittently locked-down, to whatever extent, we are all feeling screen fatigue. Inevitably maintaining an on-screen project has been difficult at times but every day I remind myself why we started it and how it doesn't have to be a finished piece.