Commission Exhibition: Group Meeting 15/05

Today in the brief meeting with my group, Salvador, Lily and Ollie, we began by deciding on our roles in this process, they are as follows:

Roles:

Curator- Ollie

Writer- Lily

Architect/ Exhibition Designer- Amie

Artist/Designer- Salvador

These are the roles for each person because, Ollie has been figuring out overall themes & supporting others in the image selection process, Lily is keen to express our concepts through writing the press release and is controlling text throughout the exhibition, Salvador is designing the posters for the gallery and possible program to accompany the exhibition & I so far have designed the floor plans and built the model and plan to support in image placement through use of the model and lighting ideas.  

By considering our overall concept of lost purpose & melancholy and looking through the handwritten notes made by our family members, we discovered the quote ‘Invisible Bonds’ which we really related to everyone’s work in different ways. While Lily’s uncle and Ollie’s dad despite being isolated still have a bond with their family, Salvador’s subjects have all been left in nursing homes yet still have a bond to their families despite the separation and isolation they are experiencing. While with my images the subjects are dresses that were once worn by their owners and although they have been stored away they still have a connection to the owner, joining us together as a family. In the Press Release & Exhibition description that Lily is writing as the group’s writer, she plans to mention the reasoning behind this title and the overall subject matter of our exhibition.   

Exhibition poster designed by Salvador

We have decided we will all put matte white walls up in each room to give all of our work a nice clean backdrop.

The boards will cover over the fireplace in the extra room where Salvador’s work will be presented giving a vast white space to display his 3 A1 sized images printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, framed by ivory or white frames with 10cm mounts. He plans to have one image centrally positioned on each wall to create a feeling of isolation for the subjects.

Ollie & Salvador's mount inspiration

Ollie will have the two adjoining rooms on the lower floor again with dart walls on the two side walls of each room and covering the end wall (and in turn the fireplace). He plans to have seven images printed on pearl paper at 12x16” which would be presented on side walls; and he is also printing out two landscapes at A0 size (33.1 × 46.8”) which will both be displayed on the end walls. He plans to frame them with oak or black and have small mounts for the large images and thicker mounts for the small images. 

Lily will have her work presented in the first room you come to on the upper floor, she will have dart walls covering the hooks below the shelves where four images will be hung on either side, printed on pearl paper sized 12x16” mounted by a thin, ‘handmade’ frame holding all four images, as well as two images of the same size framed in a similar manner hung above the fire place.

Lily's framing inspiration

Lily will use the shelves to display the small sculptures her Uncle made.

I will print my images as previously mentioned, 40x60” on aluminium, I do not plan to frame my images, as I will use bulldog clips to hang the photographs to create this idea of hanging out the clothing on a washing line.

My Hanging Inspiration

Two of my images will be in corridors, one at the end of the corridor leading from the entrance hall to the first rooms on the lower floor and one at the end of the upper floor corridor before the staircase; this leads the audience through the exhibition due to the way they are all spread out. The other two prints will be isolated in the other room on the upper floor again mounted onto dart walls which will be positioned around the whole room not only giving a clean surface but also reducing the room size. The images in the corridors will be hung from whatever hooks are available or from fishing line while the other two will be hung by nails in dart walls.     

All of our series of images except Salvador’s photographs will be accompanied by writing written by the subjects or owners of the subjects to allow people to understand more about the story and background of the images. By Salvador not having writing and having his images in a separate room this emphasises the distance, loneliness & melancholy the people in the photographs must feel; this exaggerates the way he has photographed his subject’s obscured by doorways etc.    

As for lighting, Lily, Ollie and Salvador all want similar lighting, heavy illumination by using the existing lighting available soft lighting will be mounted to beams in the centre of the rooms; and in Salvador’s case because of the light already available and no beams he will have floor lights carefully positioned and protected from the public- this is possible due to the large space. This sort of lighting will work well with their work because of the natural lighting featured in all three of their series; however my images have black backgrounds and I want them isolated within the space they are in. Therefore, I plan to light them by having spotlights hung from the ceiling trained solely on the images with the surrounding lights turned off; I will do this for both the images in the corridor and in the room.

My Lighting Inspiration

We also decided that we will have the exhibition in June, with there being a private viewing on Friday 1^st and then running from 2^nd to 30^th June. Even though it will be Summer, from previous people’s exhibitions held here we have found that the location is still very cold due to no heating so we would plan to light the fire in the entrance hall to warm the whole location as much as possible.