This was the second exhibition I had installed and taken part in. The first was at my previous college where I completed my foundation course.
This time the experience was a lot more focussed on team work, as all the fine art course had to pull together to organise and produce a finished result that was open to the public. A daunting task to start with. Having had a few meetings with the group we came up with a name for our exhibition. We called in ‘M’or M-exhibition.
We decided to split the group into four smaller groups that could work on specific areas of the organisation. This gives each group a more focussed task, and meetings were planned to feedback from each group. The four groups were marketing, logistics, curating and fund raising. I chose to be in the logistics team because I’m quite a logistical thinker, and I also have a car which helped a lot with transporting work too and from the gallery space.
As part of the logistics team we had to think about health and safety, transport, hanging, lighting, erecting walls and sorting the gallery space out to look professional.
Having found the space that we had all agreed on, we got the keys and had a good look around. There where pro’s and con’s with the Arches space. The space was quite large, and split up into three segments which meant the work may have become divided, but this was good as each part had different lighting and a slightly different feel. The space was well lit, but the lights weren’t to my liking because they were almost too bright and I think they took away some aspect of the galley feeling. The space had lots of power outlets so people could light their own work individually and also install things like t.v.’s and projectors, this was very useful.
The main concern for the space was the damp in the air and on the walls. This meant people had to be very careful their work wasn’t ruined by it. There was nothing anybody could do about this so most people didn’t hang their work till the last minute.
Now we had a space and a deadline, it was up to the logistics team to create a timeline for everyone to see, so that the other teams knew what was going on. After this we met with the curators to make a floor plan. We then set about loading boards and walls into the college van to take them down to the space. I started to sweep and mop areas that were really dirty, and then we erected all the walls that where in the plan, this took a lot of measuring and teamwork. We also had to paint all the walls white and clean the place up to create a professional gallery environment.
With time pressing, it was up to the logistics team to hang people’s work who had not yet done so. Again this took a lot of measuring and teamwork.
I think the opening night was a great successes and this proved that each team had pulled together and done their job successfully. It was a great experience to stand in the gallery full of people that just a week before was an empty storage space.
At the end of the show it was our responsibility to take down the walls and get them back to college. The logistics team worked very hard when it felt like there was nothing to gain.
It was a great experience for me and I am already looking forward to my next exhibition.
