FRANK 
Gallery & Studios
2014 - 2024

My favorite place ever. My baby. I started FRANK Gallery&Studios when I was 23 years old. I couldn't see any other way to continue in such an unsustainable business as art and culture, unless I tried to develop new concepts for exhibitions and for artists working conditions. It was much too hard to be healthy and driven in the art scene, and way too much bullshit. I wanted people who work with art and artists to be more frank about how life and business is for us who dare to work with emotions, creativity and to go our own way. Without any backup, alone but very capable of hard work, I started FRANK. A safe space for artists to develop and grow. A place also where hard work gets you places, not just contacts and privilages.

FRANK was operated by me, in the name of my company. Founder, curator, and driving force behind a decade of independent artistic activity. I gave my creation FRANK to Lisa Mårtensson and her Absurdum Temporary Art to continue the work.
 

Between 2014 and May 2024, I founded and led FRANK Gallery & Studios — a self-initiated, independent platform for artistic production, exhibition, and dialogue. The project housed around 20 artist studios and operated entirely without public funding, employees, or profit motives. FRANK was built on the idea that sustainable conditions for artists require more than space — they require knowledge, networks, and visibility.

The name FRANK, taken from the English word meaning honest or direct, reflected our approach: transparent, practical, and artist-centered. Through ongoing research and collaboration, we explored topics often overlooked in the art world — such as law, procurement, mental health, marketing, and financial sustainability — with the aim of improving everyday working conditions for cultural practitioners. We worked closely with national initiatives like Konstpool and Upphandlingsbryggan to further this mission.

The gallery functioned as both a showroom and a laboratory for exhibition formats. Our goal was to bring audiences and artists closer together by rethinking how art is presented. Artists who exhibited at FRANK received conceptual support and curatorial guidance on how to strengthen their ideas through spatial design and presentation — often resulting in unique, site-specific installations.

In 2020, I co-authored the book FRANKdocumenta – Archiving the History of Unestablished Artists, a publication chronicling three years of FRANK’s programming. It includes conceptual analyses, interviews with resident artists, and a practical guide on how artists can position themselves within contemporary art history. The launch and accompanying workshop were held at Moderna Museet in Malmö, and the book was distributed through Malmö Konsthall.

Throughout the years, FRANK also served as a platform for knowledge-sharing. I regularly held lectures under the title Crash Course – Life as an Artist, speaking at Malmö University, Önnestad and Valla folkhögskola, and other institutions. I also shared insights on entrepreneurship in the cultural field at events like Creative Mornings (Malmö), Hyper Island (Karlskrona), Nucka (Malmö), and Jane (Malmö), sometimes in collaboration with accounting consultants to demystify financial and legal aspects of being a self-employed artist.

We collaborated with the Swedish Public Employment Service’s cultural division to improve their understanding of the real conditions artists face. One such collaboration was the event Do It Yourself, organized in partnership with The Creative Plot and hosted at Moderna Museet in Malmö (2015). In 2023, we also contributed to research conducted by Malmö University's K3 department on the working conditions of cultural professionals.

As curator and main organizer, I produced over 100 art-related events under FRANK's umbrella. We also hosted interns from Linné University and Landskrona’s vocational programs in cultural project management and event coordination, and received internship applications from other institutions including the University of Gothenburg and Malmö University.

contact@marytoreld.se
Malmö, Sweden