It’s a bit like speed dating….. a quote from Debra Eck, one of our SCIBASE artists. That was a good analogy of SUPERMARKET. You get xx amount of minutes to give as much information as you can to the public and to fellow exhibitors, swap cards and then hope that they will like you enough to get in touch again.
I feel a bit shell shocked in work today. My body is aching slightly from lugging a heavy case and my head just feels like I’ve absorbed too much information and can’t unravel. I need to get some thoughts down though…. before another project starts and I forget everything that has happened.
So… where do I start? Checking in at Manchester airport last Wednesday and one of our cases being 28kg? We were given a ticking off and told not to do it again, which is pretty amazing. Landing in Stockholm, we decided to head straight to SUPERMARKET to drop off our artwork so we didn’t have to lug it back in the opposite direction towards the hostel. Thankfully, one of our ‘crew’ was already there so we were able to spread the work out and make a start on hanging it.
It is quite difficult to do this, as you’d normally have the luxury of moving work around, trying different spaces and moving away to think about it for a while. We had 3 hours. 3 hours to make half of it presentable enough for any early visitors the next day, the other half spread over the floor so that it could still be viewed. It wasn’t open to the public until Friday, but Thursday was Press day.
Arriving back at 11am the following day after a pretty restless sleep, we were greeted by the South African group already viewing our work in the booth. ‘Why are you not ready?’ they asked. ‘Because we are tired with travelling’ we responded. Pretty stupid response really when we think of our 2 ½ hr flight in comparison to theirs. They muttered something about us going to the pub and wandered off… hmmmm… not a good first impression. But it left us working flat out to complete our booth before any other comments were thrown our way.
Stockholm
Five days of living the life I would like to live. Just five days. Five days of describing myself as an artist without it sounding weird or pretentious. Five days of sharing ideas and thoughts….of saying ‘Yes – I got funding for doing this because somebody thought I was worth it’. Five days of being just an artist…….
Then tomorrow brings me back to another faceless life of working in a job I don’t really want to do, but the bills have to be paid.
Five days is more than a lot of people get.
Tomorrow we will be there….. though my case is still sprawled on the living room floor waiting to be put into some sort of order – yet again.
We have a lot more artwork than what we took to Norway last year, so it’s been very difficult to fit it all in. One piece is really heavy…and another is so fragile that we are afraid that it will get damaged on the way. It was touch and go whether we took either of them.
Because of the room it all takes up in my case, I’m now having to go through all of my clothes and see what can be worn several times. Looking ‘nice’ just isn’t an option. I can only hope to be warm and comfortable.
I looked on face book before and saw that Bristol Diving School are already there and setting up. Damn! I wish we could have gone early. An extra day off work…or an extra day of paying for meals and accommodation, just couldn’t be done.
Right then…. I shall now sign off and hopefully report from Stockholm for my next post.
Google analytics is the main reason I haven’t changed my website in a while. I was curious about visitor demographics and what media works best when talking about my work. It’s been a really great tool. The only downside is that I really don’t understand how to add the link every time I make changes, so I have to ask someone to do it for me.
Bit of a pathetic excuse I know, but that’s how it is.
So what’s this got to do with funding, international travel or exchange you may ask?
Well…. I happened to notice today that my website had got an extraordinary amount of hits from twitter. Odd I thought, as I hadn’t been tweeting much recently. Looking into it, I saw that Ace North West had tweeted about the funding they’d given me and had added the link to my website. Oh $%^&^£ ! I hadn’t put the ACE logo on my website because I didn’t want to make any changes and thus lose the analytics link. Doh!!
Will have to be a pain in the backside now and ask nice person for help…again……
So ACE, if you are reading this…… the logo will be up there shortly. I had already put it on the SCI website AND all other publicity – honestly!!
Waiting…… the frustrating part of ACE funding ( well, one of several frustrating things!) . There are a few bits we need to sign off, but need the money to come through to do it. For all out there who don’t know, ACE only sign cheques off on Wednesdays, so I’m hoping it will be there in my account tonight when I look.
In the meantime… we’ve been sorting though the big list of ‘to do’s’….
All performance artists needed to be booked into a time slot, so that took quite a while to sort. I suppose with having so many groups to coordinate, it was difficult for the organisers to find slots for everyone. So eventually, Kimbal ( if he hasn’t frozen solid on the way ) will perform on Saturday at 18.45 : http://www.supermarketartfair.com/content/talks-perfomance-2012
We have almost everyone’s work now…most are straightforward and easy to hang, but we also have one 3D piece made entirely from paint. It is unbelievably fragile, so I hope it survives the journey. One piece is pretty heavy, so I don’t think that will go in my case!
On top of that, we’ve had one artist sending his work, section by section, postcard size, to an artist in Sweden. So far, only 16 of the 38 pieces have arrived … but … No stress -we have 6 days to go! Complicated?? This is only the tip of the iceberg!
Local News printed a story on us today – 2 weeks late. But Hey ( as they say in Sweden!)
http://www.wirralnews.co.uk/wirral-news/local-wirral-news/2012/02/08/wirral-arts-group-go-to-international-exhibition-in-sweden-80491-30283143/
