It has been a while since I last posted an update, it’s been a busy few weeks with the holidays and then a busy January so far! A lot has been going on in the last few weeks, namely my residency at AirSpace Gallery drawing towards its conclusion. My exhibition, ‘The Alien Bestiary’ will be held at AirSpace Gallery from 15th – 23rd January.
With my residency coming to an end, this meant I had to begin the proposal process for my solo exhibition. Looking through all of my research, notes, artworks etc from the last six months, I had to make decisions on what exactly I wanted my exhibition to be about, what works I wanted to display, how I would create the work, the time scale of the installation process. I wanted to make sure in my proposal that I was ambitious for my first solo exhibition, but not so outlandishly ambitious wherein my proposal just wasn’t achievable. For me, it was important to use the whole gallery space, as why wouldn’t I when I’m given such a great opportunity to have my own solo exhibition! Since it is the first time I’ll be using a whole gallery for my own work, I split the floor plan up into different ‘sections’ so I could focus on the curation without getting overwhelmed. I found the process of putting my proposal together very interesting, and trying to imagine what my exhibition would look like in the space, with all of the exciting possibilities. The most difficult part for me was trying to describe works that didn’t exist yet, as I wasn’t entirely sure how some of the works would look and operate within the space until I actually started to make them.
Of course, the proposal isn’t a document that is set in stone that you are forbidden to deviate from, as the meetings and discussions after submitting the initial proposal have lead to many changes from my original ideas. All for the better, though! As an artist it is the norm for ideas to constantly be tweaked and changed as time goes on. The meetings leading up to the installation week of the show were extremely helpful for me, not only in knowing the feasibility of my ideas and works, but also in getting valuable advice about the install, what materials I’ll need beforehand etc.
The next few posts (that I will write up over the next day or two) will be about the installation of the exhibition!
