Buy SALA Art With the Festival’s Official Online Sales Partner
This year, for the first time ever, we’re joining SALA Festival as their official online sales partner and showcasing SALA artists in an online exhibition on our groundbreaking hosting platform. Not only does this give art lovers nationwide an easy means to buy SALA art, it also gives all SALA artists an easy way to enter this year’s People’s Choice Award with just a fews click of the mouse.
“Bluethumb and SALA are a perfect partnership,” says Bluethumb Co-Founder and Managing Director Ed Hartley. “We’re both South Australian and both on a mission to make art accessible. In 2018 we’ve come together and a huge amount of work, in a short period of time, has gone into making this happen. We’d like to extend a special thanks to Penny Griggs from SALA for her tireless work.
Penny Griggs at the launch of the 2017 festival. We can’t wait to see what this year brings! Source: SALAfestival.com
“Critically this event heralds a landmark change in the way art festivals and prizes of the future will be run. No longer does every event need to build and maintain its own technology platform at considerable expense. Nor will they have to endure the significant administrative task faced by volunteers in collating hundreds of artist entries etcetera at the 11th hour.
“This, coupled with the huge network of artists and art lovers that Bluethumb brings, means that the art events we all love, that support great causes like a thriving South Australian arts scene, will have a bright future.”
Tempest by Amanda Ford, one of this year’s People’s Choice entries. Browse all the entries here.
Penny Griggs, the CEO of SALA Festival, shares Hartley’s enthusiasm and belief in the new collaboration. “SALA Festival is really excited about partnering with Bluethumb this year. The online gallery offers participating SALA artists another platform to connect directly with a wider audience and sell their work nationally. SALA (South Australian Living Artists) Festival was established in 1998 to connect living artists with audiences and this collaboration is another great way to broaden that connection. We are looking forward to celebrating South Australian Living artists with Bluethumb this August.”
Studio Dog by Rod Bax, another People’s Choice contender. Vote for your favourite here!
Behind the scenes building the technology to make this collaboration possible is a small team led by Melissa Cooper, Bluethumb’s Head of Product and UX. “Pairing the Bluethumb platform with SALA instantly brings new capabilities to the festival and South Australian artists this August,” explains Cooper. “Not only have we built a prize platform with online voting to help artists further engage with the wider community, but all of the features we’ve built over the years will be instantly available to SALA artists to help promote, sell and raise awareness of their practice, and make it easy for anyone to buy SALA art.”
Melissa Cooper (right), Bluethumb’s UX lead, with SALA artists Jasmine Crisp (left) and Cynthia Schwerstick (middle). Source: Adelaide Review.
The SALA People’s Choice Award entries are open now and close 31st July 2018. Any artist exhibiting at SALA can enter here: bluethumb.com.au/sala. $3,000 will be awarded to the artist that receives the most votes.
Voting opens to the public at the beginning of August. Be in with a chance to win one of 5 x $500 Bluethumb gift vouchers by registering your votes. You can choose your 5 favourite entries from 1st August 2018. See all the entries so far here.
