A FORMER York College student has set up a new art gallery in York.

Gavin Pollard, who is about to move to York from Selby, said he decided to set up the business on his 30th birthday.

He said: “I just turned 30 and it was a crunch point.” He said that back in college he had seen a gap in the market for an art gallery which did not take the usual commission fees of between 35 and 50 per cent.

Gavin said: “People are looking for other avenues to make money. If they make arts and crafts at home yet have full- time jobs, it can be expensive and difficult to find the time to sell their work.

“I saw the potential for opening up an art space where artists could pay for space to be used and display what they want. It takes no commission, just a rental fee for your space.”

When he finished his contemporary design and craft course, Gavin became a freelance prop maker for the television industry, and worked with the BBC.

“At York College, I started to do the freelance prop making and I just carried on once I finished. But in the last couple of years it started to drop off. Because of computer graphics, they don’t need us making things anymore so it was getting harder and harder to find the work.”

So he resurrected his idea of the gallery and took a business plan to York Business Advice Centre. The centre gave him advice and £10,000 to kickstart the business.

It also put him in touch with HSBC, which has provided the gallery with an overdraft and requirements such as chip-and-pin machines.

The support enabled Gavin to set the gallery up in a 700-year-old three-storey property, in Newgate.

Newgate Gallery will open on August 1 with about 20 artists’ work and can hold up to 40 artists.