professional practice journal

EXHIBITION OVER

finally we decided to abandon the 100 piece mark and allow the last week for everyone to finalise and print what they had actually made. this was only possible as we did not advertise the 100 works mark - in the end there was 76.

putting up the work and preparing the space was very hectic. although the plan was, without objections, to put up everything a day in advance, there was only one chelseans work up on time. 11. may - one day to opening - all the pieces from the uel side were up, one chelsean with work missing and i and joe ended up waiting for two more from chelsea until 8pm (i'd been with philippa the ones to arrive at the time agreed upon - 10am) to have a first look at the space. although, they had work with them, they did not hang any for some reason.

the following day was extremely busy due to the last day being a bit of a failure. i and philippa met up early in uni to get all the equipment i'd booked - we needed several projectors and a tv among other things like cameras and a tripod. the rest of the day was trying to get the chelsea guys to show up, having to in one case print all the work ourselves for the person (philippa on the library a3 printers, as i was making the signs for getting people over from hackney wick station). finally they put their work up 15 min before the opening. we also had to work out all the projections, which proved to be a big asset to the overall atmosphere adding a dynamic aspect to the whole space. the clean-up was also very late, as we had to wait for the work to be put up.

the event was a success: plenty of people, who were interested in the work and generally had a good time. we had drinks provided by the space (part of the service we paid for), we did not have a dj as planned, because of the shortage of time, but it did not make much difference.

we sold a few prints, among which was one of mine: the world map missing america. it was bought by a professional photographer named ian black, who really enjoyed it and i had a chat with when he came to pick it up.

joe and i managed to think up a kind of guide to figuring out the links between the works, but in the end it proved a bit confusing. it did not help, the labels put on the walls were a bit off in the end. if all the work would have been finished in time, there would have been a proper guide which had artist's statements and properly illustrated links between the pieces. a good aspect were the short texts everyone wrote about their practice and the particular pieces displayed.

in the end the project was a success. for many the very first exhibition outside of university, it had a professional feel. although we did not manage to get all the work and finish everything the way we would have wanted to, taking in to account how ambitious the task was in the timeframe to start with, we did well.

looking back the solution to our problems in communication would have been to be ore organised and have more collective meetings, but this proved difficult as the chelsea students were difficult to get a hold of most of the time, as they had less investment in the whole project, as they were not getting marked on this and prioritised it to be last on their mind most of the time. if we had done the whole project within our uel students, it would have been easier to orchestrate, but would have also lost some of the tension of opposing universities.