It was only when I ‘lost’ my phone that realised how much time I wasted checking emails, tweeting and scrolling through facebook. Of course, if I had a choice, I’d rather have my phone back than trying to figure out how to do even basic functions on this thing that I’ve borrowed.
So last night, I dropped my phone…….again. But this time, the screen cracked and the rest just died. This being the one week that I have all these students from Leeds contacting me to pick them up from the station and show them where our exhibitions are in Liverpool.
A frantic search through the house to try find one of my old cast offs was unsuccessful, so I had to try to see if I could borrow another to get me through this week. My brother came through for me – not just with the lend of a blow up mattress, but, with being a bit of a technophobe, full use of his dinky little Samsung – which he ‘hardly used’.
I’d barely swapped over the Sim card when the phone rang…..Sophie, student #1 was at Lime St station asking where they should go. It was barely 10am! What’s with students these days? Are they all up at the crack of dawn?
Cutting a very long story short……….I got to Liverpool, picked them up from Tate – where I thought it would be better they spend their time rather than waiting at a cold station. Took them to Unit 8 on Albert Dock and with very little prompting, they set up the monitors and DVDs, so everything was ready to go.
Ran round getting them some maps and pointed out Biennial ‘Hotspots’, before I had to shoot back home to get some food in and cram as much junk into cupboards as possible, to make my home/ workspace/ dog kennel, habitable.
In the meantime………miles away…….Julie Dodd sat invigilating at the Bridewell again……….
Invigilation is always a problem, no matter how organised you think you are. The rota we set up for the two exhibitions was pretty tight anyway, so when one person told us she couldn’t do her day, there was very little we could do about it. I started asking around, but realistically, it was too short notice and with it being a week day anyway, the likelihood of a hoard of people going up to visit us at the Bridewell was very slim.
I changed the info on the website and kept tweeting all day that we were going to stay closed, hoping that all would be OK. The project is huge and in comparison this is only a very small blip – not worth losing sleep over.
The good news is that we now have at least ten Leeds Met students that are going to help with Invigilating over the next week. This though, meant that I have had to convert my work room at home to a bedroom for two to stay at a time. It’s a tight squeeze and I seem to have spent most of last night and half of this morning, shifting stuff around to make a decent space.
I spent the afternoon invigilating at Bridewell , taking over from Julie Dodd, who did the first few hours. Even though the exhibition had been on for 3 days now, this was the first time I’d been able to really look at each of the works without any distractions.
We only had a handful of visitors for the day, which was such a shame, but I was grateful for a few hours of just sitting. No organising, no thinking about work and most importantly no stress.
It was the opening night at the Bridewell last night and wouldn’t you know it, it was absolutely torrential rain. If I wasn’t in the exhibition, I probably would have looked outside, shut the door and sat snuggled up to watch the box. Thankfully, not everyone thought the same and we ended up with a surprisingly good turn out.
The work looked really good ( though I say so myself!) Some of the artists had given the venue a lot of thought and had made site specific work. I walked past one artwork several times thinking ‘I don’t remember seeing a stripey bit on the wall last time I was here’, before realising that it was one of the new works! WALKERHILL -Michael Walker and Martyn Hill a collaborative duo. Graduates of the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College of Art respectively, they have exhibited their lo-fi modulations nationally and internationally.
Phill Hopkins had made use of an old glass cabinet, that we were originally going to shove into the corridor. He took the measurement of the cabinet up to Leeds to install a work of the same dimensions, during his residency at the Basement Arts Project. http://www.phill-hopkins.co.uk/gallery_381554.html
Also good to see the work of Stephen White who had painstakingly created a box made entirely from paint for the Swedish exhibition, but had made a more understated work – door mats with text for this exhibition.
I’ll be invigilating Friday afternoon and Sunday, so if anyone wants a chat – please come along!
When I got home from work last night, there was a card off the postman, saying that he had tried to deliver a parcel. I was hoping that it would be the artwork from Sweden…. and indeed it was. I had to pick it up before work, but had no time to open it. Talk about cutting things fine!
Unit 8 is now all set up, with Lydia Catterall already getting people in to talk to her. She had on a loud booming sound piece when I walked in, which caused the residents in the shop next door to complain about the noise. Oh well, what use is an artwork if no one talks about it?
While Bruce is up at Bridewell doing the final touches to the exhibition and Lydia is causing havoc in unit 8, all I can do just now is keep on photocopying and hope that no one notices what I’m printing off.
PV starts in 4 hours and I have no idea what the finished exhibition looks like ……..
Another early-ish start to the day, as I called into the Albert Dock office to sign the licence and show proof of Public Liability insurance ( Thank you a-n!) for unit 8, before I headed on to work.
My job this week entails keeping accounts, and checking money to be banked, so I’m really concerned that I have to keep focussed on the job and not let my mind wander on to the exhibitions too much, in case I start to make mistakes. I had considered taking the next few days off work, but I’d rather see if I can manage without doing that, so that I can save a few days leave at the end of all this ‘mad time’ to keep just myself.
Lydia Catterall arrived this morning, so I took her to the unit to start setting up. She will be doing a mini residency in the unit, her ‘collaborative processes are concerned with audience engagement’ I believe, but I can talk more about that in a later blog (When I actually understand what she is doing! )
Bruce Davies and Phill Hopkins had hired a van in Leeds to bring the rest of the work down to Liverpool to fill both the Bridewell and unit 8. Sooooo – they arrived late afternoon, went to Bridewell, met Jean McEwan there and they started installing, before bringing the rest of the work down the hill to install at Unit 8. Phew. Confused yet? Well, I know that I have a splitting headache while I’m writing this and believe me, there was just a little bit of tension in the air this afternoon!
The really nice thing though, is finally meeting some of these artists in person. For the ‘Stockholm project’ we did a callout for artists to send in their proposals for us to take over there. Several of the artists came across also, but we went to Stockholm mostly as strangers to each other . I still hadn’t met Jean or Phill until today, but after corresponding with each other so much over this project, I felt anyway, that we’d known each other for years.
