For my exhibition, I worked alongside two fellow fine art students & four CAP students. We created a group chat previous to discussing locations, to look at the appropriation of our work and talk about possible spaces for our exhibition.
We decided that rather than all of us emailing the same places, or too many different places, we would look, then figure if it was worth approaching places due to prices and dates, and our group leader, Sophie, would word and send emails to these spaces on our behalves.
Sophie emailed proposals for our exhibition to spaces such as empty council houses’, who were unable to provide for us due to booked up properties for Fringe Arts Bath Festival, 44AD, who were unfortunately also booked up for the time we needed and the Vestibules, who’s price was above our budget.
We then decided to look a little closer to where we lived, opposite Green Park House Accommodation, there is the Green Park Market Space, we thought about the foyer space, which is often used for market stands, however, we thought we would try and see if this would be a possibility for our exhibition.
Fortunately, they contacted us on the 28th April, and they had availabilities for the space we needed on Friday 26th May. We had to fill out application and insurance forms. Usually they ask marketers to bring their own tables, however, they provided us with two long tables after confirming and reserving availability as we could not hang work on the walls. Our exhibition was from 9am-4pm, and we got there at 8.30am to collect tables and set up in time. The pitching fee was the cheapest all week, as on a Friday it was only £5 for the group.
As a collective, we decided to use the right hand side of the room, so that people walking into the space would be able to see it, and, if it was on the left hand side it would restrict space for movement of people walking in and out of the foyer.
For my space of the exhibition, I chose to show selected works of mine that I hope to carry on into my second year, and the type of concepts I resonate most with. I decided to show A4 framed text piece ‘pour into my saviour’, three 7×5″ frames of 35mm photographs, an A5 text piece printed book & three 7×5″ matte finish photographs of my oil paintings. Originally I was going to show my A3 oil on canvas’ for my exhibition, however, they were still wet and transportation of keeping the pieces safe was an issue. So I chose to photograph & print, and have them go alongside my text and poetry pieces, which I felt complimented each other through the use of contrast in colour and black and white.
Hannah’s work consisted of both black and white, and colour paintings; Hannah’s black & white paintings were recreations of, what was originally 35mm photography, which meant, whilst personally unique to ourselves, Hannah’s paintings complimented my film photography and black text pieces. In addition, the use of colours such as blue, green and yellow were a reoccurring theme in some of Hannah’s square paintings, which, we felt, also complimented my images of paintings. I found it interesting that, as an artist, we can focus not just on how we display our own work, but how we work with those who are around us.
Generally, I think we found the whole process of creating our own exhibition much more challenging than we thought it would be. There are so many different elements you have to take into consideration, such as: cost, availability for dates, other events ongoing, competition in art industry. We also, on this occasion could not all necessarily show the work how we wanted to, for example: being unable to hang work from walls, limited space on tables, etc. However, I feel as a group we successfully managed to exhibit our work, and the feedback from the general public that had stopped to look at our work was all positive.
Caitlin Jackson 