Two Bands, Different Frequencies. 2018-2019 © Cristina Velásquez
Assembly’s innovative new platform and business model helps photographers navigate the complex and evolving world of art and commerce.
Ashlyn Davis Burns and Shane Lavalette are known as dedicated, artist-focused members of the photo community through their work with Houston Center for Photography and Light Work respectively. In 2020, as the COVID pandemic forced us to reconsider where and how we work, the duo left their institutional positions to found Assembly.
Operating virtually as an art agency, gallery, and creative studio, and with minimal physical overhead, Davis Burns and Lavalette are determined to support their clients in all the various roles they occupy, not simply as makers in a ravenous capitalist market.
I spoke with Lavalette and Burns about their exciting vision.
Roula Seikaly in conversation with Ashlyn Davis Burns and Shane Lavalette
Meet Ashlyn and Shane.
Ashlyn Davis Burns portrait © Jan Rattia. Shane Lavalette portrait courtesy of Assembly.
Roula Seikaly: How long did the idea of working together brew before you founded Assembly?
Assembly: In a broad sense, we have been considering ways to collaborate to create a new model for supporting lens-based artists for several years. We both really believe in the artists we have worked with in our prior roles as non-profit directors and have admired each other’s programs, often working with some of the same artists without knowing until afterwards, so we felt a kinship in our broader photography community for quite a while.
Our ideas really began to coalesce around the hybrid business model for Assembly, however, during the pandemic when we were all forced to operate in new ways. We saw an opportunity to take a risk in the least risky way possible. By starting a gallery, agency, and creative studio without a brick and mortar, we were able to essentially create a new business with minimal overhead, and provide ourselves with more bandwidth to devote to our artists.
Fire Flies We Make Bright As Stars, 2012 © Alanna Fields.
Seikaly: How do your previous professional experiences inform your current positions?
Assembly: We both share a passion for championing art that we feel is of significant cultural, social, intellectual, and emotional value. We most certainly bring the “artist-centric” qualities of our past non-profit roles into our vision for Assembly. We’re equally interested in the artist behind the work as we are the art itself, as we see an artist’s practice as a direct extension of who they are and what they care about, what they want to respond to in the world.
Through our past roles, we have grown to understand and appreciate the challenges that are faced by artists and the ways in which a thoughtful and dedicated support system can sustain and create opportunities and develop an artistic practice. That’s really the goal. Ultimately, we aim to provide a platform that can be agile in assisting artists in doing what they do best—focusing on the creation of new work. Living an artistic life requires piecing together many pieces of a puzzle and so we wanted to see what steps we could take to bring that all under one roof.
Untitled, 2021. © Fumi Ishino
Seikaly: Assembly is described as a “gallery, agency, and creative studio.” What appeals to you about this hybrid model?
Assembly: To us, it’s just what was needed and what made practical sense when we really thought about how one sustains the creative life. There are numerous systems of financial support that most successful artists have, so separating out just a single revenue stream even if it is the most obvious one—selling artwork—simply didn’t make the cut for us. We also saw gallery after gallery closing during the pandemic, proving that it’s truly not the most sustainable business model.
So to bring together the components of a gallery doing the very clear-cut work of placing pieces into collections with components of an agency which works with artists on commercial and editorial commissions and a creative studio, which consults on exhibitions, book projects, and even fundraising initiatives, we were able to capitalize on our strengths and weave together what we feel is a solid framework to support both the business and the artists on our roster. So, it appeals to us in that it has great potential to be self-sustaining.
There at the Seaside, 2021. © PacificoSilano_
Seikaly: Can you speak generally about the artist cohort you represent? How did you settle on this roster, and is it growing?
Assembly: Our roster developed organically based on an overlap between artists that we had both worked with in some capacity previously, and who we felt were all making important and resonant work at this moment. The ambitions of Assembly are global, so we knew that we wanted our artists to reflect that—along with being based in locations around the world, we aimed to represent varied approaches to the medium and language of photography. Many of the artists maintain a thoughtful research-based practice that informs their work, so that’s one thread that connects many of them, though each artist’s vision is quite distinct.
Most of the artists are mid-career or simply at the place in which their work is deserving of more international and institutional attention. They all maintain “lens-based” practices to some degree, though many have extended their photographic work into mixed-media, collage, painting, archival images, video, sound, and VR, among other mediums. We are deeply interested in interdisciplinary work and sometimes struggle with being positioned as a “photography” platform—it’s much more than that.
We do envision growing slightly from here, but carefully and sustainably. We feel there is value in keeping things at a certain scale in terms of the number of artists, so that we can keep true to our mission of being responsive and keeping close contact with each artist as needed.
The Road to Tepeyac #37, 2010 © Alinka Echeverría
Seikaly: What does “holistically nurturing artists” mean to you? Why is that important to Assembly’s mission
Assembly: In our minds, the various components that support an artist’s practice are interconnected and feed into the bigger picture. To holistically support that means to bring it all together and to treat the artist as an intersectional individual—not simply as an artist, but as a parent, a partner, an anthropologist, a teacher, all the various roles our artists inhabit as individuals living in the world.
Sometimes this means we are writing a grant; helping an artist find a teaching position in a locale their work has taken them for a period of time; pitching their work to brands; ensuring they have funds to support their lives during an extensive period of creating work. For us, it’s not just important, it’s necessary, because it’s the only way to build a life as a creative without having to rely on another mysterious source of income.
Stature #15, 2019 © Rodrigo Valenzuela
Seikaly: You’ve gotten into selling NFTs. Can you describe that experience so far?
Assembly: It has been a very interesting experience getting to know a new collector-base and community of artists. All of our artists maintain a multidisciplinary practice and have an interest in emerging technology to various extents. For us, one of the most attractive aspects of NFTs is the smart contract, which allows an artist to benefit from secondary market sales in perpetuity.
Artist equity movements are not new, and NFTs really provide an opportunity for an artist to receive long-term support from the sale of their works. The more we have gotten to know the space, the more we actually see it as a conceptual platform full of performative possibilities both within and outside of the market. For example, one artist we have worked with chose to give work away as a performance within and about both the market and the subject of the photographs.
We see the NFT space as a ripe space in which to experiment and redefine the traditional artist-gallery-collector relationship. In this “metaverse” the ethos is really that we are all in it together—that speaks to our core values in a very big way. The fluidity of what Assembly is and does is a beautiful thing that enables us to explore our own interests and curiosities or to follow along with those of our artists. It’s a part of our jobs that we appreciate very much.
Alejandro Cartagena’s 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize Installation
Seikaly: Are there any current or upcoming solo or group exhibitions by Assembly artists that you’d like to promote?
Assembly: We’re thrilled that both Poulomi Basu and Alejandro Cartagena are shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2021. Both of their exhibitions are powerful and worth noting. Alanna Fields will debut a beautiful new large-scale work in an upcoming exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, which we are also very excited about.
Poulomi Basu’s 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize Installation
Seikaly: As 2021 is beginning to wind down, what are you looking forward to?
Assembly: We are eagerly anticipating being able to function in a more physical way in the near future. The rise in cases of COVID due to the Delta variant continues to complicate our plans because we want to be mindful of the health and safety of our community. But, big things are in motion for physical events in 2022 and we’re very excited to be able to connect with one another in person again in the future.