So the artist can continue.
Dhanvi Rasiklal ShahChairman, DRS Arts Company®
Over the years, supporting an artist has meant many different things to us. It has meant helping an artist build a home, providing a house or studio without rent, supporting education and international study, funding research and materials, enabling national and international research trips, supporting publications and promoting exhibitions, or providing a laptop, a camera or even a car when it could materially change an artist's ability to work.
It has meant fulfilling the last wish of an artist not represented by DRS to exhibit at our gallery. At another moment, it has meant providing a fixed monthly amount, not as a salary and not in exchange for employment, but simply to say: continue your work. Do not let sales decide what you are able to create. Know that someone is standing behind you.
For me, responsibility begins when circumstance threatens continuity.
The question is not whether an artist is fashionable, immediately marketable or already recognised. Experience has taught me that potential often appears long before recognition, and institutions must sometimes have the judgement and imagination to see what the market has not yet seen.
The questions have always been simpler: Does this artist genuinely need support? Do we believe in what they are attempting? And can we meaningfully help?
Our responsibility is to ensure, wherever possible, that an artist's creative vision does not collapse because of a financial or studio-space obstacle, or a circumstance that could have been overcome with timely support. With the DRS Arts Grant, the objective is therefore not merely to help produce another artwork. It is to protect continuity, so the artist can continue.