The Sarah Wiseman gallery is centrally located in Summertown, on the same happy block as the wine bar. A small space which uses its white walls resourcefully, the gallery intentionally supports young artists and showcases – alongside the traditional mediums of paintings and bronze sculptures – the oft-neglected applied arts: ceramics, collage, silk prints, and jewellery.
Sarah Wiseman, the owner of the gallery, is an energetic and warm woman. When talking about the paintings at her gallery, she becomes the docent of an elegant house showing visitors items of interest, flavoured with slivers of gossip and tit-bits of curiosity. Despite the fact that her familiarity with the pieces is due to the frequency with which she must be required to give such a talk, Wiseman seems to truly enjoy herself.
Wiseman developed a love of art at school when an inadequate art teacher on sick leave was replaced by a supply teacher who suddenly inflamed her interest in Art History. After taking an extra year to do Art History A-levels, Wiseman studied History of Art with History of Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her course required a museum placement, and growing up in Oxford made the Ashmolean an obvious choice. Instead of a single placement, Wiseman worked in the Department of Western Art with curator Timothy Wilson for two placements and three months following her graduation.
She started the gallery in 1998 at the tender age of 24. She had worked at the Oxford Branch of the prominent London CCA gallery but it when it closed she spotted a gap in the market, wanting to work with young artists, with ceramics and applied arts and painting.
‘The least prepared to start a business the better,’ Wiseman says wryly. The small business will never conform to a standard business model. Fortunately, the gallery is well-situated. ‘Summertown is a hugely cultured area,’ explains Wiseman. She attributes her visually and culturally aware customers to the flux of creative people living in the area. BBC Oxford is just across the street from the gallery, and people in film and television, writers and musicians flock to the area. The gallery doesn’t struggle to ‘educate’ its clientele. Instead, she finds that her customers are people passionate about art, who regularly attend exhibitions and gallery openings.
Still, despite the gallery’s location, it is an impressive feat for the gallery to be thriving amidst the belt-tightening post-2008 years. ‘2008 was nail-biting,’ Wiseman admits. Small businesses don’t have big reserves to fall back on. Fortunately for the gallery it was largely a harmless recession. ‘Art is a good place to spend your money,’ says Wiseman. Buying art – which should come from totally disposable income – is an intentional alternative play to spend your money. People who come to the gallery are passionate about buying art and purposefully put money aside to do so.
Wiseman is honest enough to admit she constantly questions whether or not an item is art. ‘That’s the beauty of art,’ she says, ‘it should constantly challenge you. It’d be disappointing if it never did.’ The true challenges are the best journeys. When your mind shuts down, you must force it to re-open and reconsider.’
The essential character of a person wanting to go into a career of art-dealing, Wiseman says, is self-sufficiency. ‘You shape and mould your own career. There is no set plan. You create opportunities and make the most of them. There are no natural progressions.’ This career path evidently flatters Wiseman’s own personable skills: you can change your course by connecting with artists, meeting people, and finding opportunities where you can succeed and contribute.
In addition to running the gallery, Wiseman also privately collects art. ‘When you run a gallery,’ she says, ‘art is your life. You are continually introduced to artists and visit studios; it’s impossible not to walk out with something. You never sell a work of art; it sells itself.’
During the interview a customer comes into the gallery to find an item for her mantelpiece. Wiseman dissuades her from a large piece that looked like it might ‘perch’. The customer collides into a piece with which she feels much more affinity, a Stanley Dove sculpture of a donkey and rider, and buys it. And Sarah Wiseman’s instinct is proved right once again.
