Hi everyone!

As part of my photography course, I have to track my development on a blog. The posts from September 2011 until January 2012 are part of a module called Project Management, for which I was required to work in a group of eight students to create an exhibition. The blog followed every step we took in order to create a successful gallery. The blog posts starting from September 2012 follow my final year on the course. I'll be documenting my research and analysis of my final year projects, as well as include notes of my Professional Practice unit - which prepares us for a range of post graduate options. Finally it also looks at a project called New Creatives, where I'll be working alongside an artists to help college students get more involved with art.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Brighton Photo Biennial 2010...

Last year, as part of the course, I went to the Brighton Photo Biennial: "Brighton Photo Biennial is the largest and most exciting curated photography festival in the UK and with 60,000 visitors in 2010, one of the best attended in the world." (http://www.bpb.org.uk/about/). The reason of this trip was to closely evaluate the different types of exhibitions and gallery spaces as well as how the photographs were hung up.

The venue of the exhibition “Outside In”, by Stephen Gill, was BPD at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in the Royal Pavilion Gardens. It was part of an exhibition named “Strange & Familiar: Three views of Brighton” and included three artists: Alec Soth, Rinko Kawauchi and Stephen Gill. Due to this exhibition being part of the Brighton Photo Biennial, it gained a lot of publicity. However, what also played a large roll in increasing the exposure is that it was held at the Museum and Art Gallery. This is a well known location, whereas some exhibitions were held in a garage or a little, unknown shop. Nevertheless, as the exhibition is in a gallery instead of a shop, the only audience it will target is those interested in art. If the exhibition is in a shop, a larger audience of a wider variety would visit as they could perhaps come across it unintentionally. Another way this exhibition gained publicity was due to the Brighton Photo Biennial website (www.bpd.org.uk), where it is possible to find information about Stephen Gill and where his work is located. Lastly, Stephen Gill had leaflets which were scattered around at every exhibition. The leaflets contained information about what his exhibition would be on and where it was located. Stephen Gill, thus, had relatively much publicity compared to other artists. 

A very popular way of displaying work is according to the concept of the "white cube" (example above). This is a pristine white space where high expectations come into play and because of its 'sacred' status, any object placed within its walls acquire a special value. We are currently looking for venues that have white walls. Having white walls is very typical for photography exhibitions - when you type photography exhibition into google most images have white walls. The reason for this is that no matter what colour photograph you have or what theme, anything will fit with the white wall. If, for example, the wall is bright green and the photographs you have taken are bright green, it would look a bit silly and the photographs wouldn't stand out.



To the left are some more examples of the galleries in Brighton. A lot of the photographs were pinned up against the wall without any kind of backing (top left). I personally didn't like this presentation because the paper wasn't properly stretched out and thus looked bumpy. It also looked as though there wasn't much thought put into the displaying stage. Some other photographers had they work mounted and in a grid on the wall, it looked very organised and well thought out. Others had their photographs in frames, which is probably the easiest and way of displaying work. The photograph that is on the bottom left is taken through a hole in a garage. The garage door had a lot of holes in it through which an audience could look and inside they would see projects of the artists photographs. This was a very unique way of presenting work and I quite liked the idea of it - however, it was in his own garage in an area of Brighton I hadn't heard of before, he probably didn't have many people come over to his exhibition.

 Another way of exhibiting work is on a small screen, this way you wouldn't have to think about printing costs,  presentation costs and much more. Another positive is that the images will always be properly it, pictures on the wall might be in a darker corner for example, or a light may reflect on the photograph causing it to be harder to see. I do think, however, that this screen is a bit too small to view the photographs on and if it were to be my exhibition I would use a larger screen or perhaps a few screens next to each other so more people could view my work at the same time.
 This exhibition to the right is part of the "Strange and Familiar" exhibition. It is similar to the white cube in the way that it is an empty room and the art is on the wall - however the walls are pink! The photos in the exhibition were taken from the point of view of a little girl, and that's why the walls are pink. The exhibition is making use of both photos and text to make it more interesting.

For my exhibition I want to either mount my prints and hang them on the wall or get glass frames for them. I think that the presentation is very important and it has to look very professional, the prints that were nailed to the wall didn't give off professionalism to me, although it was a proper exhibition. 

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