John Hurrell – 2 January, 2013

EyeContact wishes all its many readers a happy and safe New Year holiday and best wishes for 2013. The past year was busy with visitation and readership up markedly, and now running at around 3,000 a week. To be more precise EyeContact had 180,546 visits in the past calendar year, from people all around the world reading about and discovering contemporary New Zealand art. This remarkable audience reach is sustained by constant publishing of original reviews, and increasingly essays and interviews, from a diverse group of writers.

Despite this (as many of you already know), we were advised in November that EyeContact was declined funding from the CNZ Arts Fund for the coming year. We are now compelled to turn our attention to finding the funds necessary to sustain this forum, as well as producing content for what is clearly a large audience. Advertising is one source of income we do have, independent of funding, and we believe that we can increase our effectiveness in this arena. We are looking into the Boosted initiative from the Arts Foundation and will be announcing a project soon through their platform. In the near future we will be investigating more direct fund raising initiatives such as a benefit auction and will announce more on this soon. If you, dear reader, have any ideas, we are only too happy to hear from you - email us at: chris@eyecontactsite.com

A big Thank You to all our fabulous reviewers, many of whom at times have contributed substantial articles without asking for remuneration. Big hugs for them. We also want to thank profusely our wonderfully loyal advertisers, and finally and most importantly, you - the reader - for your sustained interest. 2013 is going to be a challenging year, but rest assured we will do our utmost to keep the show on the road.

Sincerely

John Hurrell and Christopher Taylor

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