Week 17 - The Exhibition

Set Up and Opening Night

The set up began on a bad foot, due to not finishing the work that I was to be displaying at the exhibition I wasn’t able to get in till 10:30 am, an hour and half after I was meant to, when I arrived it was chaos, I had no idea where anyone was or what was happening, I had one person telling me we needed to get paint but another saying we already had it, I was also trying to find my team mates or just anyone who knew what was happening. Eventually I discovered we had the paint and needed to start painting the boards immediately, that everything that had been brought over or was bring brought over by Photography and Venue Team, and that the magazine people where on setting up the pipes, and Design where just doing whatever where ever to help. We spent the next 4 hours painting boards, unfortunately I only had a small roller while Tasha and Paige had large rollers which certainly hindered my production rate as by the time I had finished the first they had both done two, so Paige decided to paint the chalkboards for the feedback area to go in to front while I took up the second big roller and managed to get 9 sides painted before I had to leave at 3:30pm. I had to leave to go home and finish the last piece for display; originally I had intended to have it finished for 5 so I could go in and hang them up before the night opened, this didn’t happen and I ended up arriving for 6:10pm, when there I had to quickly string them up in the back room and kind of throw together a display which was a complete mess and looked extremely underwhelming. I stayed the night which had a pretty good turnout of people until eventually going home at 8:30.

Overall the day was a compete mess where many things went wrong and hindered the set up. The first thing to hinder the set up was my god awful time management and the fact that I still hadn’t completed the work that was meant to be on display 3 hours before it was hung up, if I had managed this correctly it would have been finished the day before and I would have also been able to get sleep as another huge hindrance was my lack of sleep. Before going into the setup of the exhibition I had only managed to get a hours of sleep the night previously, and only two hours for the three nights before that; this meant that I was already exhausted before even beginning the setup, this also mean that during the day I had incredibly low energy and so struggled to work at a fast pace to get things done and also struggled to think clearly hindering the set up and the work I was meant to do. The other members of the team were also a hindrance at times, as when I had to go home I knew that if someone didn’t help then they wouldn’t get the boards finished, I went around everyone to see who could lend a hand and a lot of people from both Design, Marketing, Venue, and Social Media all said they would come and paint a board or two but in reality only Dany from the Venue Team actually painted any leaving Tasha and Paige to do them by themselves. To make things worse the entire photography depart meant, who didn’t do an awful lot in the afternoon other than hang their work up refused because they didn’t want to get paint on their clothes despite it being washable emulsion paint. Due to all these failings and hindrances, most of which were on my part, it did effect the set up but it could have been fixed had people held up to their word, and the exhibition was ultimately set up and completed otherwise, just without some of the features such as the department boards and lighting which where sacrificed as a result. The tubes as well where also hindrance as they looked incredibly empty and did an awful job of filing the space which made it look empty and almost ‘half arsed’, especially combined with the number of people who never showed up to set up making look even worse. In conclusion if my time management had been better and people had kept their words it would have turned out differently but not that much different as it still carried on and happened.

 
The Exhibition Itself

After the god awful set up I couldn’t leave my display looking how it was so I went into collage the next morning picked up some easels and used some of the spare plinths to create a new better display, I also added an old piece of work to help boost it and create a better looking display which I was much happier about. 

The rest of the exhibition layout also had its ups and downs, my favourite part was the entrance (shown above), and this funnily enough was the only parts which only had a few small compromises happen to it. It featured four central panels of white with the vinyl logo on flanked by two chalk feed back boards which all looked great. 

The Fashion Department also look good and used the boards effectively, and in the Fine Art section I think easels added a lot. The Photography section in my opinion was the worst, rather than having separate displays per person like everywhere else in the exhibition they joined there’s all together in a strip, this filled the spaces terribly and made it look very boring and flat. The biggest issue I think with the final layout was the plastic tubing and it did an awful job of filling the space and blocking out and separating the work from the background of the busy shop fronts. All of this came to gather to create a very mediocre looking exhibition which was hindered mainly by the piping but also by the amount of people we have had drop out which has gone a long way to creating this messy look. The booklets where however a success as where the numbers, we had about 120 people walking around on the evening of the first night and had at least one person walking around though out the day. 

The magazines were also a success with all of them being taken by visitors making them not a waste of money; inside they featured two pages per person with an image of the work on one page and the name, profession, and bio on the next. 

The work I showed itself I am partially happy with, the Bird and the Spider as well as the Mouse and the Centipede I was both very happy with, however the large piece I was not. It was heavily rushed and not very well done; in my fmp it will only be an experiment and not anything of significance because of that.

The Health and Safety also went well and no one was hurt, it was also fully carried out which is great as it meets the legal terms. Finally the take down of the whole show was also quick and easy and left no marks on anything- as it should be so we did at least make all the legal requirements.   

In conclusion it was very much a victim of circumstance and compromise but we did still manage to pull it through with some of the original ideas working well, especially with the numbers, the magazines, and the feedback board. It was still however heavily compromised which ultimately effected the exhibition greatly after so many changes and level downs on what we wanted, a lot of this is also hindered by the issues had during set up and the fact we didn’t get everything we wanted up and running like it should have been. We did still how ever put it on which was our main aim but it just could have been so much better and almost feels like a waste of effort and time seeing the end result which is a shame but the way it is.

Other photos from the exhibition-