Commission Exhibition: Initial tutorial

During my commission group tutorial with all of the members of group J, Ollie Gapper, Salvador Dewald, Lily Kale and I, we discussed with Steffi our initial exhibition ideas and she outlined the key issues we must focus on and include in our final pitch:

1. Floor plan: In the briefing we have been given a choice between three locations, The Nucleus Arts Chatham Gallery, Fort Amherst (Gate House) & the streets of Chatham and Rochester (no gallery space). So far I have acquired a floor plan with measurements of the Nucleur Arts Gallery:

 and tomorrow I plan to visit Fort Amherst to take photographs of the space and take measurements. 

2. Set model- We will soon  have a team meeting where we will discuss which location is best for us, we will then discuss what we all wish to do in the space which will also include a floor plan, which one of us will design and make a scale model of.

3. Lighting- Once we have figured out where all of the work will be displayed again we will discuss what sort of lighting we would like to highlight our work such as spotlights.

4. Size of prints- when doing the drawings and scale model we will all be able to experiment with the sizes of our images, how best to present our own work & create a strong impact as well as making them work well with the other individual’s series.

5. What to print on- Steffi gave us a few different websites of companies to research different ways of printing, printing surfaces and prices so that we can outline what we would print on for the exhibition. These are the companies I plan to research: the print space http://www.theprintspace.co.uk/, A. Bliss http://abliss.co.uk/about.html, Spectrum www.spectrumphoto.co.uk/, Artful dodgers http://www.artfuldodgersimaging.com/.

6. Framing- We must also think about how we will frame and mount our work, whether we will keep all of our series uniformly mounted and framed, similarly framed but not identically or individually framed to divide our work; some of the above websites also include mounting.

7. Press Release- we will also have to write a press release including the definitions & concepts of each of our units collectively defining our overall ideas.

8. Pitch- This will including all of the above, presenting an outline of how we would produce, display and budget our exhibition.

9. Exhibition title- Steffi explained that rather than a simple title we should try to come up with some sort of pun, something that relates to all of our work and our so far defined main theme, melancholia & lost purpose; she explained we should try to use a film, song, poem, psychology as inspiration.

These are our main individual  concepts that I have taken from each of our blogs:

Amy- need to retain memories & have aspiration, important events, black void- unattainability & fragility, lost in time & space
Ollie- ‘Action potential’, father’s health deterioration and waste, wast of time and life, damaged, psychological effects,
Lily- personal connection, uncle’s mental illness, isolation, psychological processes, waste of time & life
Salvador- society, ignore and hide the elderly, passing away, deterioration, Deterioration of the mind, body belongings, once our purpose is fulfilled we are stored away, waste of time.

From the key ideas from each person’s evaluation, I took these main words;
- Stored away
- Lost purpose
- Melancholia
- Hidden
- Lost
- Confined

I began putting combinations of these words into google and have collected a few different ideas that we could use as starting points for our title:

- Silent films, silent conversations
- Lost in translation
- Damaged goods

Films:


Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind- forgetting a passed life, removing it, destruction, wiped away, erased.









Winter Passing- a man who isolates himself and is rediscovered, pulled back from the brink, lost and found.

Finding Nemo- lost and found, rediscovered, journey through life, experiences.













Castaway- trauma, hidden, confined.








 

Before Sunset- things changing, time going by, the past, memories stored away until found again.











Jacob’s Ladder- isolated in your own world & day to day life, the use of a ladder as a metaphorical representation of descendants into death, isolation, confined and hidden away.













I also researched some existing exhibitions and their titles which have similar themes to our work which we could use as inspiration for our own gallery:

‘Imagined Lives’

‘In the Blink of an Eye’














‘Like you’ve never been away’













‘Portraits of the Unseen’

10. Steffi also mentioned discussing how many people to allow into the gallery space at a time, whether we would limit this or not. For my series I am hoping to have them isolated in a small area on their own which I would want viewed by small amount of people at a time to create a feeling of isolation as well as allowing the impact of my images to become greater.

11. After I have visited the gallery space tomorrow I will become to consider which gallery would be best for my work as well as my opinion on everyone else’s images in the location. I am hoping that the location will be large enough for me to have a partitioned of section possibly in an alcove or purely using a couple of moveable walls and a curtain to remove outside light. I also image my four images to be quite large one on each facing wall with a spotlight on each one mounted possibly on black walls.