Alice has been a registrar for the past eight years and is currently four years into her role at Victoria Miro, where she manages their loans programme. If that wasn’t enough, Alice also liaises directly with around 15 artists and works closely on their customs records as well as working on client services and art fair arrangements with the rest of the Victoria Miro team. But it doesn’t stop there.

Interested to find out how being a registrar has changed during the pandemic and how Victoria Miro is working to become more environmentally friendly, we asked Alice a few questions. First up;

What does an ‘average’ day look like for you as a Senior Registrar in one of London’s top galleries?

Aside from working from home for the past year, my regular routine will involve checking on various timely shipments, ensuring all internal records and paperwork are updated for our loans programme, our artists and our clients. Video meetings with different teams are scheduled throughout the week, alongside reviews of longer ranging projects for storage, customs and condition checking of artworks. I work closely with our exhibitions, technical and sales teams on a daily basis.

How is Victoria Miro working to be more environmentally friendly?

We are increasingly aware of our environmental impact internally and with external suppliers, and this recent focus on sustainability is starting to inform our decisions.

Internally, we implement measures to reduce our carbon footprint by organising a weekly shuttle truck between the gallery and London storage locations alongside minimising singular shipments and using shared sea containers where possible, which has the added benefit of reducing costs for all involved.

We recycle and reuse most soft materials where possible, rarely using those that can’t be recycled for packing. Supplier information is shared between contacts within the industry to further our collective knowledge. The gallery has also invested in ROKBOX reusable cases which we aim to utilise where possible during regular transit movements.

From an operations perspective, our front-of-house is already paperless, and we are encouraged within the offices to follow suit (this has certainly been easier to implement since working from home). We also understand our responsibility to purchase eco-friendly and biodegradable supplies and support local environmentally conscious businesses where possible. A bike-to-work scheme is offered to all staff, as well as other incentives to support green methods of commuting. The gallery is also directly part of various ecosystems given its unique location alongside an east end wharf – the safeguarding of the local moorhen and swan population is of paramount interest to the gallery as a whole!

We have also engaged in conversations over the years with external fine art agents, to understand how we might integrate their current and future aims for their facilities and supply chains, in terms of recycling materials, renewable energy systems and in-house waste-reducing innovations, with our own. We have raised the future prospect of carbon offsetting options and plans for hybrid/electric vehicles, and also discussed how to raise more awareness of these and existing sustainable options with the public and their client base, since these developments need to be made transparent to increase uptake, which is to the benefit of all.

Finally, since the beginning of the pandemic, the gallery has channelled energy into a variety of well-received online art fair presentations and virtual reality exhibitions, which by nature have a low carbon footprint considering the minimal shipping preparations involved. This has been a very engaging new activity that the gallery aims to continue sharing with visitors in various iterations alongside physical shows in future.

Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW Courtesy Victoria Miro (Photograph © James Morris)

What’s the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome recently and how did you do so?

Arranging regular consolidated shipments has been logistically complicated during the pandemic and post Brexit when dealing with customs delays, volatile shipping rates, tight deadlines and artist and client requirements, which we treat with utmost care. Additionally, the shifting loan schedules and amending of paperwork due to the pandemic has been particularly trying! However, we have worked closely to ensure logistics run as smoothly as possible.

Ultimately, progress can be challenging when it comes to changing our ingrained habits within the industry – multiple factors must be discussed and confronted, which can be uncomfortable. And yet growing support, sustained engagement and gradual action will benefit the arts as a whole. Though it’s hard for any one organisation to control the level and speed at which change happens, I’m never in doubt of the importance of taking action where possible, however large or small.

If you would like to know more about how we at Queen’s are working to reduce our Carbon Footprint, you can view our Carbon Plan here. For shipping, storage or installation requests, your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, please contact info@queensfineart.com

As we continue our spotlight series, we speak with MASSIMO DE CARLO Registrar, Margherita Divari, to see how the gallery, with four locations internationally, has adapted since the outbreak of Covid-19.

Plowden & Smith are a large multi-disciplinary conservation and restoration studio based in Mitcham, South London. Their specialist restoration departments include Furniture, Paintings, Paper, Contemporary Art, Sculpture, Ceramics, Stone, Metal, Gilded, and Decorative Surfaces; as well as offering bespoke picture framing and object mounting services. Much like at Queen’s, their clients include private individuals, museums, galleries, fine art shippers, and auction houses.

To find out a little more, we asked a few questions. First up;

What process do you take when restoring a client’s work? Do clients ever ask you to get creative (brightening the sky, making facial features smaller, etc)?

All our painting restoration treatments are created around the specific requirements of each individual painting and are preceded by discreet testing. As no two paintings are the same, it could be said that no two painting restoration treatments are ever really the same. That said, regardless of the specific treatment being carried out, our painting conservators adhere to industry-recognised guidelines laid down by the European Confederation of Conservator-Restorers’ Organisations (E.C.C.O.) Our team works in a way that preserves the artist’s original intent, which is of critical importance, particularly when treating a work by a contemporary or living artist. Sometimes clients do want us to make historic items look brand new, for instance by completely re-gilding a piece of furniture. When the gilding is original and has a nice mellow look, we suggest they avoid regilding as it could potentially devalue the piece.

If you could only select one piece that you’ve restored recently, which would be your favourite?

Over the past few years, we have restored several bronze, Marc Quinn, Sphinx (Caryatid) editions, which was certainly enjoyable. The works are in a variety of finishes and typically require surface cleaning and retouching of minor abrasions. Although it’s always important to use an experienced art handler, such as Queen’s, to move such items, when dealing with valuable artworks or objects that are intrinsically more at risk (because of the design, materials, or methods of construction) this becomes even more important.

With sustainability continuing to be a hot topic (and rightly so!), how has Plowden and Smith adapted to become more sustainable?

Sustainability is certainly a huge topic for the art world, and as members of the Gallery Climate Coalition, one we take seriously. One of the great things about moving to our new state-of-the-art premises at the end of 2018, was the opportunity it gave us to operate in a far more sustainable way than if we had remained in our previous 19th Century building. For example, our new studios are lit by fully dimmable, low energy colour-corrected LED lighting; specialist equipment in individual departments also feature low energy colour-corrected LED lighting, and we use motion sensors throughout the building to ensure lights are only ever on when they are needed.

However, our bricks-and-mortar studio is only one aspect of operating more sustainably. Where possible, we source materials from sustainable and local sources; and over the years we have made various changes to help us reduce our company carbon footprint: using bamboo swab sticks as opposed to plastic swab sticks; starting to work with carbon-neutral delivery companies, and we are also currently trialing recyclable nitrile gloves.

For more information about Plowden & Smith’s restoration, picture framing and independent condition reporting services, please visit www.plowden-smith.com

If you require assistance with shipping, installing or storing your art? Your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, you can contact the expert team at info@queensfineart.com and we’d be happy to assist.

Views is a London-based inventory management startup looking to help save dealers time and do more deals. We recently partnered with them to make requesting shipping estimates for their users easier. With this in mind, we thought it would be useful to spotlight the new art startup by asking Views co-founder Jamie Gourlay a few questions.

Firstly, it’s great to be working with you to make requesting shipping requests much easier for Views users. Could you outline how the button works?

Sure. It’s pretty simple! Users select works they want to ship, hit ‘Ship’, input the collection and delivery address and a little more, and off the request goes to yourselves at Queen’s who will then revert back with a quote as quickly as possible. Depending on the route, this can be within a little as 30 minutes.

And what inspired you to create Views?

Two big frustrations.

Firstly, the lack of a really excellent mobile inventory system has frustrated me for a while (I’ve been an art advisor for a few years so have felt the pain!) There are loads of good web-based systems, but the accompanying mobile apps are generally less good, meaning it’s hard to pull works up when you’re sitting with a client and desperately need to. The mobile apps don’t meet the standards set by Instagram and WhatsApp and are just hard to use. Loads of galleries will have one system for web and another for mobile, which causes a load of headaches.

Secondly, it’s constantly got to me how art deals so often rely on chance conversations. I was talking to a friend at a big gallery the other day who was telling me she had been looking for Picasso Musketeer for a client earlier in the year. She found out after months of looking that her best friend in the industry (who actually worked for the same gallery!) had a client looking to sell one. She ended up getting a deal done, but it could easily have not happened, and more often than not it wouldn’t have. Information just doesn’t flow.

There are legitimate reasons for this – it’s crucial artworks don’t circulate and get over-exposed. We’re working to make it easier for dealers to identify these opportunities without the artworks in question getting over-exposed.

There are many inventory systems out there, how is Views different?

We’re working on creating an experience as easy as WhatsApp, and as visually beautiful as Instagram. Most dealers don’t even bother trying to log into their inventory management system on their phone because they’re complicated and hard to use. This often results in poor sales assistants finding themselves making emergency PDFs at 11pm at night. Views saves both the dealer and the assistant a load of time: a dealer can access everything they have access to and PDF it up quicker than it takes to text her assistant. The assistant’s evening goes uninterrupted altogether.

Views also has a Requests feature that lets you log client requests. Any relevant artworks in your inventory immediately show up, making it easier to come up with ideas of things to suggest to clients.

How easy is it to transfer from existing inventory systems?

Easy! We offer functionality to import your works from most popular existing inventory systems. We also offer a confidential free white glove data migration service if you need help.

Privacy and security is obviously something we have to take extremely seriously at Queen’s and I presume it’s the same with Views. What measures do you take to ensure your systems are bulletproof?

Customer privacy and security is basically our number one focus, to the point we hired a cyber security expert to our founding team to ensure we’re completely watertight. His previous role was implementing security systems for a prestigious online bank. We’re encrypted in transit and encrypted at rest and we literally have banking-level security, so we’re taking it seriously.

It’s naturally essential that our customers’ inventory is only accessible to them and no one else, and we recognise that their business and livelihoods depend on this being the case and take every possible measure to make it so. We’re confident we’re at least as secure as our most secure competitor in this respect. Our privacy policy is here, if of further interest.

How can someone interested in signing up to Views get started?

To get the app go to www.views.art and hit ‘GET VIEWS’ (or alternatively you can just click here). We ask people to just fill in a quick form so we can find out a bit about them and make sure Views is for them.

If you require assistance with shipping, installing or storing your art? Your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, you can contact the expert team at info@queensfineart.com and we’d be happy to assist.

For our clients who are less familiar with Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham Contemporary is an international center of contemporary art with a strong sense of local purpose. Since opening in 2009, they have held more than 60 exhibitions, with over 2 million visitors to date, presenting innovative and interwoven programmes of international exhibitions, learning, partnerships, and research. And if that wasn’t enough, they were shortlisted for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2019.

We caught up with their Head of Exhibitions, Kiera Blakey, to find out a little more about the exhibition, where the idea for the exhibition came from, and what visitors can expect. First up, we asked:

We’re really looking forward to seeing the exhibition open on the 20th of November, but where did the idea for the exhibition originally come from?

Our Silver City, 2094 is imagined as a journey that unfolds across four galleries, orientated to the cardinal points. It traces a route from change to understanding, from inner knowledge to wisdom. Along the way, we encounter a selection of artifacts, remnants, and artworks connecting the long 21st century with what went before. Every exhibition asks us to travel in time, but this one insists upon it. This exhibition asks: How might visual culture be produced, displayed, and experienced in the future? Who were ‘we’ before we became ‘we’? Where are we going now? And how might we get there?

How did you choose the artists to participate in the exhibition and are there any new and noteworthy commissions that we should keep an eye out for?

Our Silver City, 2094 is based on a methodology created by Prem Krishnamurthy; the exhibition takes the form of a speculative fiction, or a process of collaborative world-building. It has been developed over the last two years by artists – Céline Condorelli, Femke Herregraven, Grace Ndiritu – and the novelist Liz Jensen, working in dialogue with Krishnamurthy and the Nottingham Contemporary team.

Its language and texture draw upon conversations across Nottingham, with school children, climate scientists, and geographers. The project also extends throughout our building and into the city via a program developed with young people. There are almost 100 artworks, artifacts and three new major multi-disciplinary commissions by Céline Condorelli, Femke Herregraven, Grace Ndiritu.

Céline Condorelli, Dos Años de Vacaciones (Two Years’ Vacation). Exhibition view, TEA Tenerife, 2021. Photograph Sergio Acosta.

Why did you decide to partner with Queen’s on this initiative?

You reached out to us first and despite having relationships with many other transportation companies we remembered you because you had such a personal touch. After our first meeting we knew right away we wanted to build a working relationship, you helped us problem solve, made an effort to get to know us personally and we felt supported beyond just a transaction! You’ve assisted us with the logistics and movement of over 52 works of varying sizes for the exhibition from over 20 different locations, so it’s great to be working so closely with a team that we can trust for our latest exhibition installation.

Are there any outputs that you’d like to come from such an innovative exhibition?

We hope it will start a dialogue about who are spaces for and the civic role of institutions. Along with yourselves, we’re working on a new green exhibition guide; and we want to empower the young people in our city by providing space and opportunities for them to meaningfully participate and connect to the many components of the exhibition.

Where can our clients find out more if they’d like to attend?

The exhibition opens on the 20th November through to the 18th of April. If you’d like to visit us or find out more information, all the details on the exhibition can be found on our website, here.

For exhibition installation, storage, or shipping requests, your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, please contact info@queensfineart.com

When exhibiting at one of the largest art fairs in the world, it pays to be prepared. That’s why we spoke to our Storage Facility Manager, Mark Woodsell, to see if he had any top tips that he could share with clients. Mark has extensive experience installing at an impressive 14 consecutive Frieze fairs globally so, when it comes to Frieze Art Fair, who better to share their three top tips for exhibitors to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Require shipping, storage or installation services for Frieze? You can find further details on how we can assist in your Frieze manual or by emailing info@queensfineart.com and our expert team would be delighted to assist.

One site survey, continued project advisory services, specialist packing, multiple risk statements and method statements, transport and installation and an extremely experienced logistics team working through the night to balance complex access requirements to ensure a successful art installation.

We recently had the pleasure of working with the team at Creative Giants and The Saatchi Gallery to transport and install the #MasterPiece by the Brighton-based 2016 Palm Award Winner and 2019 CAF Artist Of The Year artist Iva Troj as part of the launch of Halo Infinite, the famous video game franchise.

Our specialist team, led by our client services manager, Jonathan Kennedy and fine art technician, Luke Regan, provided support to Creative Giants to help to transport and exhibit this commission at the Saatchi Gallery here in London.

Titled the ‘Master Piece’, playing on Halo’s lead character’s name, the artwork was transported through the night and installed over a weekend.  The artwork itself took just over a month to complete and the aim was to blend Renaissance art with cutting edge entertainment, prompting the viewer to consider video games in a new light.

Though not obvious to the viewer, the piece consisted of three smaller separate panels due to access and transport requirements from the artist’s studio. We were tasked to join the panels together on-site at The Saatchi Gallery so the artist could infill the joins to create the effect of a single larger panel. We also consulted with Creative Giants and their fabricator to ensure that the prop frame could be installed easily and safely once the canvases had been united and hung.

We certainly think the finished article looks pretty spectacular.

If you require assistance with large scale sculpture art installation, then your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, contact info@queensfineart.com and we will be in touch.

For many, the de-installation of an exhibition has the potential to be a stressful time. With numerous works being removed, packed, and either sent to storage or to clients, there is often a lot for the gallery to coordinate in a very short space of time.

For this reason, our coordinators and lead technicians will usually carry out a comprehensive site survey, working closely with our client to assess the transport, packing, access requirements and carry out any necessary risk assessments ahead of the de-installation. On this occasion, the team at Queen’s had previously installed the exhibition and were already very familiar with the space at Cardi Gallery and its requirements.

On the day of the installation, our team of technicians de-installed and pack the 161 paintings, including a beautiful Mimmo Rotella overpainting on a metal sheet, before de-installing several sculptures of varying sizes, ranging from just 23 x 14 x 14 cm to a much larger 240cm in diameter round wood and mirrored sculpture, weighing 110kg.

As is commonplace with many of our clients that are based in premises around Mayfair, access requirements in these buildings often present challenges that newer, purpose-built, premises are able to avoid.

Cardi Gallery, for example, is situated in one of the oldest townhouses in Mayfair with small ornate doorways and narrow stairways in certain parts of the gallery that, perhaps, historically had not formed part of the main house. Our team of technicians had to meticulously plan the safest way to navigate these unique access requirements. One particularly large work situated on the basement level, for example, was unable to fit through the existing doorways however our technicians were able to identify alternative access through the lightwell of the property, securely lifting the work through the lightwell to complete the de-installation.

After packing and crating the various works, the team transported all 161 works to our secure bonded storage facility, where our storage team logged the works, added them to our client’s inventory and placed in storage.

Of course, each exhibition de-installation presents unique challenges but the team at Queen’s remains on hand to advise and complete all exhibition de-installation requirements across the UK.

If you require assistance with an exhibition de-install, then your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, contact info@queensfineart.com and we will be in touch.

Last month, Queen’s had the pleasure of working with Hunt Kastner on their latest exhibition ‘Alien Pollinators’ at Frieze No.9 Cork Street in London. The exhibition presented the work of two Czech artists, Anna Hulačová and Pavla Malinová.

Working with the gallery to pack, unpack and place over 26 works within the space, we were keen to find out a little more about the exhibition and so we spoke with Camille Hunt, co-director at Hunt Kastner.