Rationale

Professional Practice Two, has overall been difficult and yet easy.
During the project I felt no real purpose, I merely stood as a news reporter to my won blog, reporting back after any major changes.
This was partly due to the fact that before ‘The hang’ there was a minimal amount of jobs to be done pre exhibition, and people that took a greater interest leaped at the opportunity to take the lead roles, thus leaving others with little to do. Most of the work is yet to come, and the ‘proof is in the pudding’ as the saying goes, all else that comes before is merely what we anticipate to work, and to occur similarly this is the same with logistics but not Marketing nor Fundraising.
I felt the team worked together as a whole, there were no bad relationships, all ideas were listened to and tasks that were found were dealt with well and almost always successfully. Where tasks were less successful such as the catalogue, we found alternative routes that worked out well in the end.

I did however find that certain other areas of curating were less satisfactory, not necessarily, the work -load in Fundraising seemed unfair, and it appeared to be the case that certain characters put more effort in than others, but unlike the curators this was less of a desired choice. Thus because of this we did not have the funds raised that we required for certain things to allow the exhibition to go smoothly, particularly the opening, correspondance came across to other groups asking for work to be done for them practically and in the end money came out of our own pockets due to a few people not pulling their weights on other teams.
Everyone at some point had tasks, why could all of us not make a similar effort where asked? Had I been asked on my own team to do a job, I would have jumped at the chance.
With lack of organization in one area this often had a domino effect in other areas, and I feel this effected the exhibition plans negatively. As well as first of all slowing processes down, it also meant certain areas had to be neglected entirely simply. Had people stuck to schedules tightly perhaps we could have done everything we desired to do.

In terms of space we have had issues too, some confrontation has occurred as despite being asked people did not deliver proposals thus receiving less space, while others changed their spaces without referring to the team leader, adding further stress.
Similarly we had problems with timing in the delivery of posters, and have not been allowed the time to advertise as much as would be desirable.
In terms of themes and how we have chosen to plan the exhibition I believe that we have chosen the best themes and names possible, and this will work in a positive way towards the final
All in all despite a small lack of organization and problems with communication in some areas, it seems the exhibition could come together well, but at this point it is still hard to say, which is why a rationale would have seemed appropriate after opening night. I generally finally feel optimistic at the predicted aesthetic, despite being dubious at first, and in particular the idea of individual spaces under Flusty’s theory has turned out incredibly well.

Myspace

This is going to be one of my final posts for the PPD project.
The spaces were put up on the board, I’m not sure when and people have been categorized according to what committee leaders think is appropriate considering their works themes and how artists will appear together.
The final choice of space themes was
Prickly
Jittery
Slippery

However I was placed in prickly which bore some relevance in one idea when I looked at the detailed description but not in any other way as it began to mention surveillance, which is completely unlike my work, and so I chose to move immediately. I have moved myself to Slippery space, which centre’s on ideas of dreams and memories and the unreachable. With my work being something of a nostalgic nature this seemed much more appropriate, It was a slight shame as the people I have placed myself with compliment my work less but it fits better as a whole and makes more sense personally and so I prefer it as a whole. My chosen area is approximately a metre wide but goes into a corner and onto another wall so it is a little larger. I didn’t want to take anything too big as people require more room than me but I did choose two walls, as I like the idea of safeness in corner and people leaning in to see my work.
I will be presenting plates with laser cut photography inside alongside the slide magnifier in which will be slides of my Grandparents wedding, all of which will be mounted on the wall.
The pieces won’t be huge so they will need to lean in all they can, and with it being on the end of the room this will not interfere with people viewing other peoples work.

Everyone revisited the space however I could not do so as I had a laser cutting session again! Steph however kindly took some photographs for me of all the spaces but she was unsure which one was mine as the map wasn’t about at the space. The photos will follow shortly.
With only a week to go I’m getting nervous now, there’s so much to do and as I have not seen the space I am still dubious as to how my work can really look in it.

Name names more names!

I hadn’t really thought at any point what i could possibly name my piece as, I have been feeling pretty apathetic towards the project, however a good chat with Sarah Taylor allowed for me to think about what I was making and what it really meant. My work is currently dealing with the idea of spoils and how things may disintegrate and be ruined but still remain precious and perhaps more beautiful in their delicate nature. By looking at this area I have chosen to emphasize spoils within my laser cut work, and so I have chosen to simply call the piece, ‘Spoils’.
I have been trying to think how to place my work, what I am actually going to exhibit, which as a curator is obviously part of the deal. I want it to compliment the space and I realized my ‘odd’ and disjointed objects do appear very much lost so this will fit nicely with the title, however I am still not entirely sure what I will be showing, only that I want to exhibit slides. I found a slide enlarger today in a charity shop. I was initially going to project slides but there has been a constant issue with space and I kind of want to just sneak of somewhere small and not be part of the confrontation. The slide magnifier solves this meaning people may view the images whilst not taking up masses of space, nor needing sockets.

Yay!

Catch up

I haven’t done a post in a while, so there’s a few new bits of news, Lucy has asked people to fundraise by donating blood and having people sponsor them. I myself cannot do this due to restrictions in piercing etc; however I will be trying o get people to sponsor me.

Jonny has come up with a poster, which looks pretty cool, it’s pretty much been in the running for a while but we were waiting on sponsors to confirm so that we had ALL information, I just hope we get it printed in time now.
In kind of less good news, the catalogue is no longer a go go. It seems we would not be able to raise funds, as well as people just being too elusive to get hold of for details. However Ruth has very sweetly been doing an entire website for us all, which will have our details of the exhibition and links our work online on blogs, personal websites and such, so we’ll be giving out leaflets, which will refer attendees to the exhibition space.

http://lostpropertyleeds.com/

That is all for now.

Catalogue

Seeing as there will be a large amount of us in the exhibition [forty-four I think to be exact] for viewers to reference work, view all artists as a whole, briefly, we the curators felt it a good idea to make a catalogue of artists. Most student exhibitions do have a catalogue process underway and by doing so we will be able to have a piece of text about ourselves, which can inform the exhibition attendees of our practice, who we are and what the work is about. So we’ll be asking students to give in a brief written summery and a small image.
Also in recent news we talked in the same meeting about designing an exhibition poster, a few people are interested, but so far Jonny and Jessie have appeared the most interested in contributing. Obviously with the title we need something that is relevant in it’s aesthetic, and we will need to include detailed information of the exhibition as well as any sponsors etc.

Some things ....

That are on during the next couple of days.

An eclectic mix of art and design events that i shall be attending.

Red and white in which some of my friends are exhibiting their graphic design work.

An example of which can be seen here, by Mr Prentice of Ian.

and here is the facebook event with all details on

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=361828729533&ref=ts

Before hand i will be popping into, Fourth Draft, another Graphics and Illustration exhibition.

I cannot seem to find the event on Facebook however, it is running 6-8 in the Marrion Centre market.
Boom!

And at some point or another i will be popping over to PSL for the new exhibition, preferably a non University day as it shuts pretty early.

Anyway here's the information, it looks fairly interesting, and i'm interested to see the lomo, original war photography.

http://www.projectspaceleeds.org.uk/i_can_still_see_you_unid64cf_page.aspx

Themeessss

Even though we have come up with an exhibition name, we have no exhibition theme, in a recent meeting I attended Emily mentioned something about Prickly space etc, and in a later meeting I missed it had been confirmed that this would be the theme we would be going with.
The idea behind these spaces comes from an Angeleno geographer named Steven Flusty. Flusty proposes characterristics in spaces that make them uncomfortable for the public and there are five different types being:
-stealthy spaces “cannot be found”
- slippery spaces “cannot be reached”
- crusty spaces “cannot be accessed”
- prickly spaces “cannot be occupied comfortably”
- jittery spaces “cannot be utilized unobserved”
I’m not sure what we’re going for with this, not even sure I completely get how this will work, but we won’t be able to use all of the space ideas as we don’t have a full five spaces and so will be choosing a couple