evaluation.

After few weeks of preparation, many meetings, hours spent on researching, facing technical difficulties, unexpected turns in development of our ideas and putting everything together our exhibition is over!

I feel that it went very well. On the first day, before opening, we faced few technical difficulties, so it was a bit stressful but we managed to get everything solved and running nice and smoothly fr the visitors. Maybe we didn’t have a huge amount of people coming to see our work, it was roughly about 25 to 30 people but as it was our first ever site exhibition, and we didn’t actually have that much time to prepare it, I think it was a success anyway.

In my opinion each one of us responded to the space very well, all of in a completely different way. Nevertheless all of the pieces worked together really well making one big piece. Some of the final ideas were different to what there was planned. For example, Rachel’s idea for the wallpaper didn’t happen due to a cost of printing. Basing on the same intention of highlighting the decay, she now decided to put frames in the spots which normally would be hidden. It was to catch viewers’ attention and make them think about what they believe art actually is. Does putting the frame on the wall make the piece inside of it art? I think it’s a very interesting idea. Rebecca’s piece has changed as well. She used her backup idea of the letters and referring to the past of the building. She placed her piece very close to mine so I think that also worked really well as we both responded to the history of the building. Stewards idea stayed nearly the same to the original one, the only thing which has changed was a location of it. He used the main room instead of the back room, so the final effect was much better as well. Everyone who came to see the exhibition was very impressed with his piece, and personally I think it was the best part of it.

The only thing which went wrong was the fact that we didn’t have booklets ready on time so we needed to print them out during the first day of the exhibition. It also happened, that when Stewart went to print them out, our lecturers came to see the exhibition so Stewart wasn’t there to talk about his piece of work as they were looking at it. He managed to come back before they left so the lecturers got to see the booklets. They said that the fact that Stewart wasn’t thee is not going to affect his mark but we all felt very guilty and we all take equal responsibility for what happened.

As a group I think we worked very well. We helped each other out as much as we could, in every matter: development of ideas and process of making, preparing and putting the actual exhibition up. We had few group meetings which most of us attended, and they always were rich in new ideas. It was a pleasure to work with my group!

Here are some photos and videos

 

final piece.

And here it is! I didn’t put any posts of the progress or making the final piece as it was so time consuming and I just forgot. But I have a video of the final piece tried out in the final space.

Enjoy!

invitations.

Within my group I agreed to make invitations to our exhibition for the lecturers. We agreed on the general idea of it- we want it to look, feel and sound old, as it was from Mozart’s times. So I have done some research on the form of the actual invitation, what wording I should use etc. Here are the two samples:

As a group we decided the second version will be better so I handwritten it on a piece of paper. Here’s how it looks like:

And here’s an original version, before tea-staining the paper:

That’s how the finished version of the invitation looks like:

artist statement.

Here’s a little explanation to my work which can be found in the information booklet for visitors of our exhibition.

Don’t be afraid to open the door!

My intention in making this piece of work was to have a little journey over the time and show some facts about the space which most of the people may not know about. I placed it in such place so as you walk in, you can get to know the space better and maybe understand its character before exploring rest of it. I wanted to show the history of the place to as far as we got to know it from the records in local archives. Each row shows a different time in the past, the change of a purpose of the space over the years. Bottom row is the one which shows the oldest part of the history, the higher you go the newer story you see. I will leave it to you to figure out what this place, you are just standing in, used to be in the past. Good luck!

final poster.

Here is a final design for the poster. It’s Stewart’s creation with little suggestions from whole group. We are very proud of this poster. It’s very simple but stands out a lot at the same time. I think it reflect the experience the viewers will get from our exhibition. I am very excited nad looking forward to the exhibition a lot!

way of mounting my piece.

This part of the project personally I found the most difficult. As I am rather useless when it comes to technical/making stuff I asked my brother and cousin for some help. That was best decision I could have made as they came up with an idea within 3 minutes and it didn’t require any drilling, nailing down etc.
Here’s the way they solved it:

So they used an existing hook on the wall, screwed in another one, same distance as the width of the piece of wood, on the piece of wood they put two nails on each edge and a little hook in exact centre between two nails to hang the motor on it. We tried it out with hanging a hammer on it to check what type of weight it could manage and all I can say that the test went well and there was no problem with hammer hanging of it, where my piece will be much lighter than that. Here’s the photo:

change of the space.

Today I went to the shop to get a curtain pole for hanging my fabric. It was rather difficult to find one which will be long enough as the distance between the two walls is equal to 3 meters 22 centimetres. Although I managed to find one which was extendable up to 3 meters 80 centimetres I faced some difficulties I didn’t think of before. When I went to buy the stuff, one of the staff member was very helpful and was advising me on how to mount everything so it doesn’t fall off etc. He made me realise that I will have a one big problem which is the relation between the length of the pole and the weight of the fabric. For my project to work I would need a support in the middle of the pole, otherwise everything will just end up on the floor as my fabric is too heavy. So t solve that, there was two different solutions. Either one, to screw a supporting holder to the ceiling in the middle point between the walls or have a pole supporting it from the bottom in the same spot. Unfortunately none of these ideas could actually work. Option with screwing anything to the ceiling would fail as the ceiling there looks rather loose, there’s an actual hole in the middle of the room with pieces of ceiling hanging off. The other idea would ruin my shadow theatre as I would have that straight pole going through the middle of the screen. I could use it as a part of my project but I can’t really see it working. So I came up with an idea of changing a spot for my piece of work. Instead of using the entrance hall I will use the disabled toilet situated also in the front of the house – door opposite the entrance door. So it still stays as a first piece of work in the exhibition, but now instead of looking at it straight away, the viewer will be able to explore it him/herself. I am actually very happy with my new location as there’s more aspects I have a clear idea for and I know how I want them to look like.

First of all, my project is about history. As we all know, typically to find any historical information we need to look for them in the books. I thought I can use the fact that there’s a door there and opening the door could be a metaphor for opening the book. It will give an interesting aspect to the piece and will engage the viewers a bit more as they actually need to discover the piece themselves. Second god thing about this space is the size of it. It is not as tall as the other space, therefore, I’m not going to lie, it will be easier to fill the space up and hang the piece. I mean the height of the room is exactly the same but the door is much smaller so I can use the wall to mount my piece of work.

I also think I know now how I want my piece to look like. As the space is vertical direction I could use four different frames from the lamp shade and on each of them I could show different moment in time. Each row would represent a different purpose of the space, going from the bottom row as the oldest one, to the top circle as the newest.

Here’s the photo of my space:

how am I going to mount my cut outs?

I was thinking how to mount my cut outs so it’s not very complicated to mount the paper cuts themselves and then the whole creation. So I came up with an idea of a use of a lamp shade. I don’t want to use whole lamp shade because I think it might be a bit too heavy so I just want to use the round metal frames on which the fabric is mounted. It will give me a perfect round frame to mount up the shapes, it will be easy to hang it from the ceiling/on a stand and it’s not very expensive. I managed to find a lamp shade which has a set of round frames in different sizes. That’s how it looks like:

So now I cut out all the fabric to get all the frames out. I tried out the idea of putting shapes on it, and that’s how it looks like:

I think it will work very well as it gives me a lot of space to work with in the matter of placing the shapes on the circle. It will also be easier to keep the balance which I think might be essential when making the circle spinning around.

idea of the motion.

As I’m still deciding on what shapes I should use I thought about the way of making everything move. I really want it to be in motion as it would be a very interesting addition to the whole performance. I think I don’t want it to be a usual up-down or left-right moving or it could just have elements like that but I want the main movement to be round, so something disappears when something else appears. I  found the way of making it move without any big innovations.

Depending on how I will mount everything, if I will use a counter or attach it to the ceiling I have two or three options, which will also not be that expensive. I’m talking about disco lights or mirror ball motors or moving display turntables. Prices vary, as well as way of delivering power to it, as some of them are batteries operated, some need to be plugged in to the wall. But at least it gives me a variety of options and choices.

Here are the motors:

• hanging from the ceiling

                                            

• put on the table

                         

ideas for the cut outs.

I was thinking about my idea and the more I do the more I’m sure of what I want to do and how I want it to look like. The space I have is rather big so there must a lot going on to fill it up and entertain the viewer. I thought about using 4 major purposes of the building: house, post office, hotel and a pub. The challenge for me now is to think about the cut outs which will we representing each of the moments in time.

Here are the examples I came up with:

House: armchair, sofa, fireplace, table with chairs, candles, servant, lady, window with curtains, coat hanger, bookcase, entrance door.

Post office: envelope, post stamp, “post office” sign, counter, bag with letters, scales, people queueing, postman.

Hotel: keys, door with a number on, bell, counter, suitcases, counter, entrance with canopy, bed.

Pub: bottles, pint glasses, microphone, guy by the bar, coloured lights, music notes, dancing couple, table and chairs.

I need to decide which shapes will represent given places best and find a way to make cut outs so it’s easy enough to recognise them.