‘On Brown & Violet Grounds’
Install Diary
Sunday, 22 September 2013
DAY 6 of Install – On Brown and Violet Grounds
Day 6 of install was super busy and the most productive yet. I systematically went around each work and element of the show to refine and finish it. I started by fixing the banner and hanging it back up. Job done! Lets hope it holds this time…
Next I concentrated on my newest work (the one I talked about in a previous post and the trouble with the cables). We decided to re-make it AGAIN as the black slug of a cable cover interfered with the work too much, so it needed a minor adjustment – all will become clear when you see the piece.
The third work was our next concentration. Without giving too much away, the problem with this piece has been the mass of wires trailing across the space to connect all the light elements. I have been testing this work all week and no configuration looked finished or right. In the end, I started again, repositioned all the cables and moved the work out into the space more.
We ended the day by hanging the framed drawings and lighting them, difficult as I didn’t want the lighting for the drawings to take away from the intense glow created from the installations. Having said that I wanted the drawings to see seen, even when the daylight fades in the evening.
Saturday, 21 September 2013
DAY 5 of Install – On Brown and Violet Grounds
Yesterday was all about cables! An email arrived in my inbox at 9am (before I had got into Piccadilly Place to start work) – turns out the mass of sticklight cables that were entwined in a pile at the foot of one of my works was all too much for the site’s sparky…
He had, in my absence, completely taken apart the whole work, strung up all the cables with cable-ties and put the whole thing back together. At first I was mad! Then I saw what he had done… he had done a rather beautiful job of arranging the work (probably better than my original arrangement actually – although the work was going to be re-made anyway before the show opens). If I had wanted the tightly bound aesthetic then happy days and thank you to the sparky, but alas not! However, it did prove to me that if I was to ever show this piece again elsewhere I could trust someone else to install the work.
I began a debate with the electrician and site safety officer as to what I was allowed to get away with in terms of a pile of cables. It made my chuckle when his answer to the situation was ‘you arty types always want to do something different’… well yes sir, we do! The discussion ended by a compromise – I was allowed to untie the trusts and arrange the wires tastefully how I wanted, as long as they weren’t in a tangled mass (acting like a huge transistor apparently).
It took me most of the day to re-make the whole work, on the fourth attempt I got it right. On the first attempt I realised it was in the wrong spot on the floor. The second attempt collapsed. On the the third attempt the wires didn’t ‘look right’. Fourth time lucky!
In other news, I was able to see how some of the works came into their own when it was getting dark. Above is an example of how the lights in the work bounce around the space and create colour ways and interesting painterly hues on the white walls.
The delight of my day was the framed drawings coming back for the framers in Didsbury. It is the first time I have shown drawings and works-on-paper so I am looking forward to seeing how they work next to the installations and getting some feedback from you guys.
Oh, and just before I left the space, one side of that bloody banner fell down! The bain of my life at the moment. A job for tomorrow?
