The last few weeks have been full on. Starting with the UCS Arts Faculty student shows, a retrospective by Borin Van Loon in the Freudian Sheep, a pop-up exhibition by UCS photography students in Hoxton, collecting framed work from MF Frames, oh, and throw in working in Newcastle for a few days and an AGM in London and the time has flown by.
I’ve been to four student shows at UCS now. Once as a participant and three as a student/visitor. This latter, as a visitor was quite strange for me as I photographed my first two, was a co-host for the third and walking in to the fourth felt just strange being a part of the University but not if you know what I mean. The scariest aspect was the realisation that 12 months had elapsed since I was in the same position. That really scared me as to where the time has gone.
No sooner had I drawn breath from that and it was off to revel in Borin Van Loon’s retrospective in the Freudian Sheep, a local gallery that I regularly exhibit in. He really is quite eclectic and I was rather taken with his exploded photographs in his DNA series.
Owen Berry from MF Frames has come up trumps with the new framing for my medium format work that will be hung in the Museum of East Anglian Life and The Print Space knocked out 4 large format C-Types on dibond for me so all the work is ready. All we need now is transport and exhibition labelling.
To be fair, I have spread the finishing work around.
Metro Imaging printed my really large C-Types and Lamden Gallery in Ipswich framed them. They were exhibited in London last June but all 5 will be on show for 8 months in Stowmarket. Five of the medium format framed by the Framing Gallery & Workshop in St Peter’s Street will be hung and 21 framed by Owen from MF Frames. I prepared the files and had The Print Space print and mount the smaller large format pints and I printed all the medium format images as I had complete control over colour/paper relationships.
The recent TV series ‘What do Artists do all day’ is an education for those who think we just practise our trade all day. A huge amount of time is taken up collaborating with other professionals to get an exhibition on the wall. Mirror plating all the new images will be the task for later today. Setting fixings at exactly the same position on frames before the hang helps for a speedy floor to wall transition and this is another thing that artists have to learn as project managers.
It is more than just making work. Artists have to work backwards form that immovable date of the opening and plan accordingly. By the time this show opens in July it will have been some 11 months elapsed in planning, making and delivery. The series has been in the making much longer than that and will continue as the show hangs.
Edgelands at the Museum of East Anglian Life will in effect be just a snapshot.
Check out the daily tweets running up to the show @tomowensphoto