2013 has been a very busy year for a small group of enthusiastic students on my BA (Hons) Photography course. The original idea to hang some work outside of Uni came from Mel Belton in the first year but general apathy prevailed. Mel persisted however and in January this year we got together to try and make this happen. Mel volunteers at Slack Space in Colchester so she engineered us a hang there. I decided to see if we could get into Ipswich Art School Gallery given I walk past it most days and I used to study at night school there in the late 1980’s. Anyway, Emma Roodhouse very kindly negotiated the use of Gallery 10 for us to hang work in the highly successful ‘Historic & Contemporary Photography’ exhibition that ran from May through to September.

Immediately after that show came down, in fact on the same day we opened again in Ipswich Town Hall with an artist-in-residence event as the first incumbents of gallery 3 in the Recreate Ipswich programme with different work.

Then only last week UCS asked if we could hang our Ipswich Art School show in the prestigious Waterfront Building. I worked through the weekend with Mel Belton, Emma Voller and Carol Gant ( Arts & Humanities curator) to hang this work. We included the ephemera work in order to fill the space. It is a very special feeling to walk in and see work from our small group on the wall. I have been very lucky in that some of my work has hung there on several occasions over the last two years but this one is special.

I showed my ‘Liverpool Echo ‘ series in the Town Hall as part of the ‘ephemera’ show and I got many comments and had some interesting discussions from visitors. It looks stunning in this space though so to see my original portfolio work from 1972 on the wall  in a University. It is a milestone for me. I worked on these negatives over that last 18 months since discovering the benefits of mixing analogue and digital in the UCS Fusion lab. The originals were shot on FP4 loaded from a Watson bulk film loader and scratched badly owing to my misuse of the loader. A Zenit B with the 58mm F2 Helios lens was all the kit I had along with my father’s extinction meter to meter the scenes. I still have the extinction meter.

Hanging this work coincides with the second iteration of the East Contemporary Art collection on Tuesday 26th November. I’m hoping some of this work will be recognised by the artists who have been invited to this event. This Waterfront hang  is the third show I have curated this year with my fourth taking place this week at Prettys where I start the hang for Trafalgar. I love the privilege of hanging other artist’s work.