Day: 5th May 2020

Group Work

Team Work and exhibition visit

To begin with, we as a course were split into three groups: Exhibition design, Promotion and marketing and Install and takedown logistics. I as shown above was parted into the installing and taking down group, as the actual event was cancelled me and my group was not able to do much during this process as it didn’t happen so all the labour work such as taking plinths, painting, measuring, considering small details, organising, gathering equipment and visiting the gallery beforehand couldn’t be done much. We managed to attend workshops and group meetings to do with the exhibition to discuss the process. Other teams had just as significant job role as my group, the design team organised the layouts which was mainly figuring out where our work was being displayed, the promotion team had an important role to share the word that this exhibition was happening by making websites, Instagram pages, initiations, posters and making sure everyone was getting involved in the development of the event. 

Install and Takedown process   

Below you can see a photo of one of our meetings we had to discuss our work and plan our exhibition further, I am sitting next to our teacher and was clearly writing some ideas down. 

From the layout post I posted before, you can clearly see that some work was needed to be hanged, us as a team had to think of a way to made them float in a professional and easy to access manner. We as a group visited the Nuclear Art Centre not too long before our event to have a clear idea of what we were working with, where the sockets were being placed, how much space does everyone physically have in which the work could not be close to each other but each individual work was meant to stand out for itself. We found this helpful as for one It was an important task we had to undertake in our group and for two we imaged what our exhibition would have looked like in the following weeks. From the visit I noticed that we didn’t have a lot of work to work with, the room was indeed divided but there was not much space for everyone to have multiple submission as it wouldn’t have been too complex and busy for our visitors to focus. Luckily as seen below the Centre have provided us with tiny hooks and binder clips that could have been used to hang people work with ease and it assured other students that they were safe to display their work how they imagined. 

As videos, photobooks and zines were not to be hanged on the wall, we had to find an alternative that would also be easy to access, look simply interesting and attractive. To fulfil this, we manged to go to a different department to find plinths and tables. We overall needed three tables and eight plinths to bring into the show space, Shainy included her own plinth she already had and customized. Moreover, we found a large plinth in a size of three normal ones that could be used to showcase the zines, they are found on the bottom left corner of the layout map. Some of the students wanted their plinths to be repainted in a certain colour such as black but most were going to be repainted white. Due to the virus and the event being cancelled we unfortunately had to also cancel a dedicated day to painting which was frustrating as I would have enjoyed making a new look for the stands. Furthermore, nobody had to bring their work to our campus as the event was postponed, we individually had to do our own research from home since then as we entered a lockdown stage where we all had to stay at home and self-isolate. Here Ill present some of the plinths we were going to use at our show:

Lastly, because of Covid-19 we clearly didn’t have an opportunity to install and take down our exhibition and display photos in this post to document it, on the other hand we were fairly prepared for it if it was going to happen, there was even thoughts of having a virtual exhibition online but not many people were much interested. I am sure our event would have been appreciated, came out successful and opened opportunities to students for future events like this and show them how much work is needed to be done to make it happen, me, other teams and our teachers worked really hard for this to happen and due to horrid circumstances, we only managed to plan and promote the event. 

Below is an Example of a Virtual Exhibition Amy has created to showcase our work and with the design team they could imagine where everyones work was being displayed.

Group main roles in a slide by Rochelle.

Exhibition has been Cancelled

exhibition cancelled

Unluckily, with all of our hard work, will power and excitement, the exhibition was announced to be cancelled due to the spread of an infectious virus, Covid-19. As the virus is contagious and was still fresh at the time, having a bunch of people in an airtight space was not great as anyone was at risk of the highly dangerous virus. With all our hope, we had to formally apologise on our Instagram page that the event was not happening anymore. By having bold, red and capital text stating “CANELLED” above our poster it took peoples interest and guided them to read about the reason the gallery and us didn’t allow the event to be displayed. The worse thing was that it was a couple of days before opening and I am sure that if it did happen, we for one would have had amazing feedback, we would of experienced our first ever exhibition as photographers and would allow us to promote each other on social media, local community and the overall public which could of influenced our careers. Below is a screenshot of the announcement from the Art Centre itself talking about its recent activity.

Initial Exhibtion Statement

My Initial statement

Each contestant was asked to create a brief statement in around 100 words to have an opportunity to say who they were, what they were showcasing, examples of work, title and I also included my Instagram and personal website page link. This statement was published under the name of the student on the online website and on the zine. As the statement was targeted at the audience, we each wrote them in first person which I found really professional due to the fact that I am being more and more familiar of having my work shown and published. 

Below is what my finished initial statement looks like. 

Exhibition online Website

Exhibition Website

What is an event without an actual website? We came out with a fully working website for our exhibition which included artists from Photography as well as Fashion Photography. Normal photography students were meant to have their exhibition first and Fashion photography were going just after. Using the free platform “Wix” the creator was manged to make this website work and be accessible to the public, the link could have been entered through our Instagram page in case anyone wanted further understanding of our event. Individuals work could have been also accessed from the drop down menu on the website with information about the photographer and a brief statement of their work that we were going to showcase. 

Here is a link to our website: https://jdee61.wixsite.com/medwayfest

Layout of our exhibition

Exhibition Layout

While making progress without exhibition the design team came up with a layout setting for our event. It explicitly shows a plan of the exhibition from a bird’s eye view, all the contestants names were shown where their work was being presented, it displayed where books and zines were placed, and banners for our show. As submitting a book along with Leila and Sophia we had a table to ourselves which wade it easily accessible to the public to view our books. Furthermore, we were actually very limited with time and the physical space because the room was not as big as we would love it to be however the design was made to visualise each personal space correctly and precisely. As my team was instillation team, I was meant to be at the place early to set up all the pillars, tables, prints, zines, drinks and any other adjustments that had to be made. Overall I was very excited about the exhibition, its content and the publics live reaction to our work.   

The Exhibition’s Instagram Page

Exhibition Instagram page

To further promote our outstanding and hardworking event, the promotion team came up with a clean Instagram page. Why social media? Most people, especially students go through Instagram and see what is happening in the world, with the magic of it, we were able to promote our exhibition with photo examples of our photography and artwork. The Instagram page was great to have an interaction with the public, gain thought and criticisms from our audience and well sadly also was made to show the cancellation of the vent itself.

Here is what our logo, bio and our recent following status is:

Below you can briefly see how our clean Instagram was presented, it looked professional, amazing, stunning and vibrant. We didn’t want to give out too much information so therefore mainly people from the promoting team uploaded their examples on the page to be seen by the public. 

Here you can see an example of a post from our Instagram page, it included their initial statement, their name and their favourite piece of photography they had from this project. Overall, I was pleased how this came out as we were able to reach to many people and it allowed us to see who was interested into our show

Posters for our Exhibition

Exhibition Posters

Here I want to illustrate the finished poster designs we had to promote our Exhibition. Some people had them hanged around our university campus, so students and teachers were aware of the time, content and visuals of our work. I was pleased with how they came out overall, they do tend to stand out by being clean, crisp and informative as much as they could. The dull background on both posters were done that way so the white text could stand out, was easily read and allowed us to not make it a very busy poster as we wanted to include some of the photos on the first poster. This allowed the viewers to visually see what they could expect from our work and the poster also included all of our fashion photography project titles; my one is “Evolution”.

The information we included on one or the other were projects titles, opening times, the address of the location which was the Nucleus Art Centre, date and time, photos, artwork, our university’s logo and the logo for the website. Without this information, the poster wouldn’t be as informative and wouldn’t allow the viewers to see everything they needed before attending. 

Invitation

A simpler design was used to create physical invitations that were printed on paper and were to be given out to the public, our friends, families and anyone interested. They actually were printed exact to the number that we had the number of people attending from our guest lists. Here is an example of the invitation itself.