Creative conversations: The business of making and selling art

Contemporary artist Ramesh Nithiyendran explains how he built a successful and sustainable art practice by balancing creativity, curiosity, and commercial collaboration

About the episode

‘Dreaming is such an important thing. You have to have space to imagine what something could be.’ 

Carving out the time and space to imagine and ideate is crucial for all business leaders. The development and growth of their companies depend on it.  

And for contemporary artist Ramesh Nithiyendran, finding time to ‘daydream’ is only possible with the strong infrastructure he’s built around himself and his practice. 

Across the first decade of his professional career, Ramesh built a successful art practice by treating it like a startup - reinvesting profits, building infrastructure, and thinking carefully about his brand. He peels back the curtain of the creative industries, talking everything from seeking funding and finding an accountant, to what it means to build a sustainable creative business while maintaining your artistic vision.  

This episode is hosted by Dr Juliet Bourke, with insights from Professor Claire Annesley. 

The Business Of podcast is brought to you by UNSW Business School, produced with Deadset Studios.

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Transcript

Ramesh Nithiyendran: I think contemporary artists and artists specifically are perceived, somewhat in our field, to be anti-intellectual if they're too transparent about the ways in which their business operates. Because, you know, we want to romanticise artists – they're about ideas, they're about seeing the world differently, and that's true. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: That's Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran. He's an award-winning artist born in Sri Lanka and raised in Australia. He's best known for his work with ceramics, and is also a lecturer at the UNSW School of Art and Design. 

Ramesh is obsessed with ideas, but he’s also deeply passionate about how artists work. How do you set yourself up so that you have the time, the energy, the money and the artworks which allow you to focus on your ideas? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: I think money does allow you to explore creative possibilities, but sometimes I think to myself ‘If I had all the money in the world, what would I be making?’ 

Dr Juliet Bourke: This is The Business Of, a podcast from the UNSW Business School. I'm Dr Juliet Bourke, a professor of practice in the School of Management and Governance.  

Ramesh, the business of contemporary art is cutthroat. Do you mind if I ask, what kind of money do artists make in Australia? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: It's interesting to quantify that data. The last time I checked the most recent report was about $25,000 but it always is a number that essentially places an artist below the poverty line, and what that generally indicates is the amount of money that they're generating or turning over, specifically from their art practice and art-related activities. And when we're thinking about the way in which artists generate income, a lot of them aren't necessarily generating income through the selling of their artworks. It's usually a combination of... it might be consultancy, it might be education at museums, it might be teaching. So there's often a number of ways in which artists are engaged in the world that actually contributes to their income. But I think the number of artists, especially just in the world but in Australia, whose primary living is generated through the selling or the trading of their artworks is very low.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: So I imagine in the early years pursuing your career you were also working on the site. How did you make ends meet? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: I worked in a bikini shop. I worked in a cafe. I've always worked like I've had a part-time job since I was 14, you know, so being able to balance all kinds of demands, I think, was just always normal to me. My art school journey was amazing, but it also, I think, allowed me to understand what kind of art I didn't want to make, how I didn't want to teach art, you know, what I thought the values were for me. And I think I've always had this thing projected on me like ‘challenging, breaking boundaries, bad boy’ and I always find it quite... almost like a misalignment. I've never really ever proceeded with this intent to challenge orthodoxies and things like that, I just feel like that's just a cultural continuum, 

Dr Juliet Bourke: But your brand is part of the package that's being sold here. How would you describe your brand? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: That's a good question. What I always say to people is that any artist who have some sense of being in the public eye who are having exhibitions, there is always an element of branding. And I think a lot of artists shy away from that and speaking about that in very transparent terms, because the kind of connection between art and capital is something that makes people really uncomfortable. But at the same time, you know, if you Google it'll be like ‘Art Basel X million dollars sold’, like ‘Artwork X acquired for X million dollars’... you know, like that kind of financial infrastructure is really part of the landscape in which we operate. But I think as artists, we sometimes want to mystify our relationship to that. And in terms of branding, I always say to people like, you can look at my portraits, you can look at things, and you can see really clearly what I'm doing. There's a certain way that I'm dressing, there's a way I'm looking, like, there's a certain language I'm using, there's a way that my social media is framed. So I always say to them, it's quite honest because you can see how it's constructed. I'm not trying to fool anyone into thinking that this isn't something that's put together, but I lean into it. I don't have a problem with being visible. And when I was growing up I didn't have any kind of South Asian contemporary art role models in Australia, on TV, or anything like that and I think being visible is a really primary way to change a landscape. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: When an entrepreneur starts a new business they have a strategy – usually looking five, ten, even twenty years into the future. What did your plan look like in the early stages of your career? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: I always feel like I can never think more than three years ahead, and that might be anxiety provoking for a lot of people to think about, but I think also kind of being embedded in like a queer community aligns with that. You know, like, I think a lot of my peers don't have nine-to-five jobs, they don't have families in ways that might suit the conventions of that nine-to-five, Monday to Friday... You know, so I'm kind of within a community of peers and people who are, I guess, looking at life in a similar way, you know. So there's that which I think is a primary thing. What I need to also predicate is I've got a fairly supportive infrastructure, so I have two representative galleries and there are lots of people that work with me to ensure sustainability and advise.  

But one thing I have been thinking about, which is a little bit less business-y, is health. At this certain age... I don't know if you remember a point of time where you suddenly realised that you can't do as much in the day as you used to.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: That you’re mortal.  

Ramesh Nithiyendran: That's actually it. I think in the last year especially, I've really come to realise that there are a finite amount of works that I can make, and what do I want to make? So, I think the idea of mental fitness is the other thing that is playing on my mind, because at this stage of my career there's so much pressure to not just present amazing physical things, but amazing ideas. And that's how the physical things manifest.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: How do you create that infrastructure to give you more time to do the work of creativity – the thinking, the playing, the making? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: I think a good framework to think about is investment. So I think when I was like 23 I always thought, I'm just going to spend all the money that I'm getting in from my artwork, which is not much, back into the business, or just of the making of the artwork. And all my part-time job stuff that'll fund my life, you know, and just... that's how you're going to operate for a few years. I always was like, if I'd sold $3000 worth of work I would put that same money back into fabrication and back into work. And I'd always try and develop the language through that thinking investing in this now, I think, means that in the future, I can make even more amazing things. And my thinking to kind of be really blunt, it was never ‘If I put $10 in now, I'll make $50 later’. It was more ‘If I put x money into this artwork, imagine the artwork I could make in five years’, and that was what I wanted to do. Like imagine the technical collaborators, imagine the size, imagine the materials, imagine the complexity and imagine the time I could spend on these works if I think like this. And I think that's something I really want to foreground, especially now, I don't have ambitions of wealth or anything like that, you know, really what I want to do is build up my studio so I can bring my visions to life. But the infrastructure is, I think, it's super important. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: So how do you set yourself up for success with that infrastructure? Who are you looking for? What should they be doing? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: If we think about the life of a contemporary artist, at least in a fairly generic kind of way, and I don't want to generalise, but if I just say most contemporary artists. So most contemporary artists who are working professionally and exhibiting in curated contexts they might have what you'd call a commercial gallery, which is an infrastructure that represents them and their interests. And their primary roles would be to generally present an exhibition of their work and engage in clients to buy their work, whether they're public institutions like museums, councils, foundations, or private clients. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: All right, so you've got a distribution channel. 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: Sure, yeah, that's it.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: All right. So you've got distribution channel, and who else do you need? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: The other thing about the commercial gallery is their representation. The kind of distribution is only one stream of their practice with an artist. So they also look after their marketing, the assistance of public programs, connecting with the industry, connecting with the media. So there's a kind of full-service engagement with an artist.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: So more branding and marketing, as well as distribution.  

Ramesh Nithiyendran: I would say that, and also advising in that capacity. So that is a core infrastructure within our industry, and those galleries often have relationships with museums, with people of what you may think of as influence in the industry, and are able to barter/create relationships with those people through that relationship.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: So stakeholder engagement. 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: Sure, yes. These terms are quite foreign to me, so I'm like, ‘Wow, okay. That's what it is.’ So a lot of artists, I do have to say, don't have commercial representation for a number of reasons – their work might not fit into a commercial market, or it just hasn't happened to them for whatever reason. It might be accessibility reasons, or it might be other reasons. But there are also different types of commercial galleries, like I'm really talking about the kinds of galleries I engage with. And then the other thing, in terms of infrastructure is you could think about it from an arts infrastructure that's cultural. So you could think about a system of public museums, public galleries, you know, councils, that are creating and presenting and commissioning artists to create work and are also buying artwork for their collections that they then look after and represent for the public. So what I will say is most artists who are practicing don't engage in that museum space. For lack of a better term, it's considered to be a fairly 'prestigious’ space, but museums are doing a lot to try and shift those kinds of barriers between artists, audience, different kinds of artists, and engage different communities in different ways. The other thing I have, I have a studio manager who works with me three days a week.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: What do they do?  

Ramesh Nithiyendran: Oh, kind of everything. Helps make the work, they're in doing my admin, engaging, helping with my diary, helping with fabrication, sourcing materials, figuring out the best way to do things a lot of the time, and then also developing relationships with the people that I'm working with. So again, it's about giving me the space to dream. And now I'm sounding a bit romantic, but dreaming, I think, is such an important thing for an artist and I think anybody who's creating something, because you have to have space to imagine what something could be. And for me, I think the main challenge is really, as my practice becomes bigger, is really carving out that space to dream and to speculate and to imagine. That's the hardest part. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: Carving out the time and space to imagine and ideate is crucial, not just for artists like Ramesh but for business leaders outside the creative industries too. And for Ramesh, inspiration often comes from his students. Claire Annesley, the Dean of UNSW Arts, Design and Architecture, knows firsthand just how valuable reverse mentoring can be, whether you're selling ceramic sculptures or software solutions.  

Claire Annesley: So when you think of somebody like Ramesh in the classroom, as you know, obviously a teacher and a mentor as well, the students are gaining this fantastic knowledge from him, not just about creative practice but also about the business of art too. And you know, he really breaks the taboos about, you know, talking about art as a business and how to sustain a career and a practice as an artist. So that mentoring role is really valuable for our students. But because of the non-hierarchical way that our classrooms are set up, what you also see is that the artists, like Ramesh, really benefit from the fresh perspective of each cohort of students that come into our classrooms. They bring fresh perspectives, they bring conceptual rigor, they bring a kind of generational perspective that isn't necessarily at the forefront of our minds. It really creates a culture of diverse thinking, and I think in the business world, reverse mentoring really captures that. And I know that, you know, if I think about my own experience as a leader, kind of running a big organisation, I always try to build in mechanisms where I can hear from diverse perspectives in the organisation, and not just from the people who are, say, on my leadership team. You know, when I first became Dean at UNSW, one of the first things that I did was set up what's called a ‘shadow board’. This was a group of students who were from across my whole faculty and their job was to advise me on what it was like to be a student in the faculty. So I was learning from them on a regular basis, every two weeks we would meet, and I would learn from them what annoyed them, what they loved, what needed to change. And then when there were big strategic changes that we had to bring out, we could lean on them for advice, for feedback, for guidance, and it just made our decision-making so much more effective. And so that model of reverse mentoring is something that I think all leaders need to build into their practice. I was really inspired by the model of the shadow board by looking at where it is being practiced in other organisations, and there are companies whose businesses were really struggling, and they used a mechanism of a shadow board or kind of reverse mentoring of the leadership team to really understand, to get a different perspective on how the company was performing what customers want. And there are plenty of examples of where having a shadow board or having some kind of other system of reverse mentoring has really turned around the fortunes of a company. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: And just thinking about money here, does the money mostly come from you creating something speculatively, I've created it and I'm going to sell it, or does it mostly come from commissions? And what would you like it to be? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: So often when museums, large-scale institutions, commission artists, they're often trying to commission their riskiest, most ambitious work. And the infrastructure of curators, people working in public programs like part of their kind of modus operandi in working with living artists is to provide them an opportunity to really test the boundaries of what they can do in a financially supportive environment, in a personally supportive environment, a professionally supportive environment. So the thing about those institutional commissions, you don't get them very often. Like they're the times when my mind can dream and you present something for the public in a non-commercial context that really gets engaged with, about its ideas and its experience. And that's what nurtures me the most as an artist. It's when I have the support to create the riskiest, newest, boundary-pushing thing, but within the context of my own work, and that generally comes with institutional, infrastructural support. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: It’s almost like you've got a blank check. Someone just wrote you a blank check and said, ‘What would you like to do?’  

Ramesh Nithiyendran: Well, you do get the spreadsheets, and you always have to, like, think about budgeting and stuff, but... 

Dr Juliet Bourke: Oh you do? So it's not a blank cheque.  

Ramesh Nithiyendran: No, it's, it's...you have to work within a budget, just like in anywhere in the world. But again, a budget is just another parameter to be creative within. Like, maybe the whole installation is butcher's paper, but it's 1000s of sheets... You know, like, I think money as an artist does allow you to explore creative possibilities, but sometimes I think to myself, if I had all the money in the world, what would I be making? And yes, I would make some things because of the infrastructure and materials and technical process that it would allow me to do, like I could do an amazing bronze cast I can cut it and then scan it, and then three print it, and then paint it and hack into it. That's all like money stuff, but then a big stream of my practice wouldn't change at all. You know, I would still be hand building ceramic sculptures and glazing them. And I think that's something that I always remind myself of. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: So you said early on in your practice there would be money in, money out. You earned $3000 you spent $3000 how has that changed over time? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: This is probably will make some people shiver, but a lot of how I work with what's coming in and then what's coming out is also intuitive. Like I always try and tell myself, ‘Okay, if I have this much in my savings account, will I be able to feel creative given the overhead expenses that are with my studio?’ Like, one key overhead expenses: my studio, which is has a commercial lease and electricity, like I fire these kilns, like that's not cheap. And for me, it's always what has to exist as a foreground to allow me to be the most creative and dream, and to keep taking the risks within my art practice. Because I think as soon as I stop taking those creative risks, I won't be happy anymore. And I've never had any business training. I can look at things and have some sensibility, and I know how to speak to people about these things, as in, I know how to say in a very non egocentric way, ‘I have no idea what this means. I'm going to take notes. Can you explain it to me? I will reflect and come back to you tomorrow with more questions’. Like, I know how to value people's expertise, and I also know how to be really clear about what I'm not understanding. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: One of the ways you make space for yourself to dream is by keeping reserves. So what do you keep in reserve?  

Ramesh Nithiyendran: That's a really good question and I think like with me as an artist, my reserves are firstly, always knowing to have a bit of time up my sleeve. You know, because amazing projects come through sometimes, and you have six months to make them. So that's number one. Then I also have a few of my own artworks that I'm just kind of keeping, and I sometimes engage in the cultural gifts program, which is Australian Government initiative where you donate your work to public institutions that are registered under the cultural gifts program, which then the value of those works come off your taxable income. So I've been engaging with that program, with my archive for example, not necessarily my artworks, but my drawings, my sketches, my diaries, you know, all of those things kind of help. Then there's always a little bit of cash. I think I'm of that generation, where I like to spend and I like to kind of see the investment in the artwork. It's probably a bit of a risky model, but it's kind of worked so far, and I'm going to keep doing it I think. 

Dr Juliet Bourke: So I know that you're thinking about what's next, but any hints? What's your next three-year ambition? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: So I think when I'm thinking about ambition in three years what I want to do, there's often a philosophical and artistic approach, and then there's also a what do I want my work life to look and feel like? And what I really have been the most excited by from a philosophical and work perspective, is engaging international audiences. And the reason I say that it's not because it seemed to be like cool or prestigious to show work overseas, it's that there's something really enlivening about responding to different social and cultural contexts as an artist, because it's really humbling to think about in Australia I think a lot of people in the industry or the public who are interested in contemporary art might be familiar with my work, whereas as soon as I go overseas there's a different kind of set of expectations, and there's also a different type of engagement when you're working in an overseas context and you're not walking into a space and everybody knows who you are. And I think that's really important, I think, for artists not to get complacent about their work.  

Dr Juliet Bourke: So, global expansion? 

Ramesh Nithiyendran: Yeah, sure. That's it. That's it. 

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