presenting; Luke Braddock, Amy Slack, Emma Padley, Rachel Mason, Fred Spencer and Beth Lund
Images of Symposium Presentation below;
Symposium Speech
We felt the contrast of our work would appeal to a wider audience; giving a variety to the exhibition week and introducing the public to different aspects of the art field.
This chart shows a guideline of how we structured our exhibition for the following 9 weeks.
As you can see the first few weeks were divided into organising a theme and title for our exhibition, as well as discussing and researching a wide variety of galleries in Sheffield.
We started thinking about the places in which we would like to have exhibited our work. We enquired at several galleries in Sheffield, including: Site Gallery, Millennium Gallery, APG Works and Bank Street Arts. After our research of current gallery spaces Sheffield had to offer, we decided upon the gallery, Bank Street Arts. These are images of the gallery space.
Bank Street Arts gallery is centrally located in the heart of the city centre, with a unique and characteristic layout. Which allowed us as a group to use the space creatively. The friendly staff and managers allowed us freedom in the ways in which we wanted to use the gallery and were very helpful.
We fell in love with the Gallery due to the intimate presence within. This may have been due to the fact that the gallery use to be two Victoria terraced houses. Bank Street also happens to be an up and coming arts gallery within the city.
We booked the event from Tuesday 20th March to the Saturday 24th March; securing two rooms for the price of £180 and the private viewing was an added £50.
After a struggle of coming together to decide upon a theme, we realised our work was all rather diverse. After discussions we found a common denominator of “beauty”. However tenuous that link maybe.
We looked at the juxtaposing ideas surrounding beauty, from 6 diverse ranges of practises. Each artist challenged the concept of beauty, using their own personal practice in order to engage with the audience. The exhibition resulted in a wide array of mediums, including painting, sculpture and photography.
Advertising
As a group we decided that each of us would contribute to the designing of the posters and flyers. This ultimately led to Emma Padley finalising the poster design. This would be an essential part of our advertising, and would allow us to market the event to the public.
It was important to also personally invite selected members of the public and gallery owners. For example Luke Braddock’s work revolved around studies of the Salvation Army, so he decided to contact and arrange a meeting with the manger of the organisation, to personally invite their members. We realised that the exhibition was our opportunity to show our work to potential future clients. Luke Braddock was in charge of inviting Sheffield gallery owners and advertising on a wide array of websites, social networking and Sheffield forums, in order to spread the word of Operam VI.
We made floor plans of the two rooms we were exhibiting in, in order to curate and organise how our artworks would fit in to the space.
We decided to show Luke Braddock’s work split through the two rooms, in order to allow the viewers to create a connection between the two pieces. A bronze sculpture was placed in the centre with two photographs placed in the larger space. His painting and audio soundtrack was mounted in the corner of the smaller room, to isolate and create a personal connection with the work of art.
Amy Slack’s graphic work based on beauty and memories of her grandma were placed in the smaller room to contrast with the work of Emma Padley, which accentuated the idea of beautifying the exposure of Germs, in particular trying to attack the media for playing with paranoia and fear of the public.
Fred Spencer’s work was positioned above the fireplace in the larger room in order to emphasise the grandness of the finished painting. He decided this worked best to allow for his series of smaller studies to accompany the larger painting by surrounding them either side.
Rachel Mason wanted to place to her work in a strong natural light. The series of paintings were placed opposite the windows so that passers by could gaze through as if they were looking back on a memory.
My art was a series of glassworks to represent the beauty of literature. I felt these would be best situated between two of the gallery’s main windows to show the contrast between the different ways in which glass is worked with.
Costing
As you can see by the table, this outlines our total cost to around £322 (not including materials) between the six of us.
Here are pictures that show our opening evening. We had a donations pot to try and claim back some of the money we spent on the alcoholic beverages. It was a rather successful night for us all!
This is some of the feedback that was left in our comments book.
Here is a selection of websites that we found to be extremely useful, so we would advise any other students looking to put on an exhibition to have a look at them!
Negative points and things that we’ve learnt.
We would’ve been better prepared if we had met up more often, as technology is not always a reliable way to communicate ideas about an exhibition. Open discussions in person are an invaluable asset to creating and curetting an exhibition. Balancing time and organising your personal time to allow for the group organisation is also important. On the whole we feel the presentation and the lighting could have looked a lot more professional. The only remaining problems that we found were the individual ones for each artist. These included things such as the lighting, positioning, and use of technology within the work, the nametags and the overall finish of the exhibition.
Fred Spencer found a problem with the positioning of his painting. The painting had a high gloss varnish finish; this resulted in a lot of interference from light bulbs and the light from the windows. This made it clear that a low level lighting would have been more ideal for a painting with this kind of finish.
Luke Braddock felt his standard of work was affected by time managing, advertising and promoting the group. He also felt the lighting of his sculpture could have been adjusted, and wall mounted, to create a better atmosphere.
Myself, Rachel Mason, Emma Padley and Amy Slack all were faced with the same issues. Hanging our work straight and level was made rather hard as Bank Street Gallery’s character consisted of slanted floorboards and different uneven ceiling heights. Which all in all made hanging our pieces more difficult, and less easy than we first thought.
On a lighter note, we found the experience fully enjoyable, and would recommend to any aspiring artists.
Any questions?
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