Preparing for Light Night on 18 May….. More than five weeks away, but I feel quite on top of things with it all – considering I fell into this exhibition almost accidently.
I’d been discussing ideas for the Liverpool Independents Biennial with artist Jacqueline F Kerr and was at the stage when a plan was almost formulated, when I saw Light Night advertised. We had no plans to be involved and worse still – no venue. It was about 3 days before the deadline to send off information to the organisers of Light Night, for their webpage, when I said to Jackie – if we can find a venue at this short notice, should we do it?
I’d heard someone mention that they knew someone who ran the units in Albert Dock ( Liverpool) so I managed to get contact details and got in touch with them. I’d had one of these units before to set up artwork in, so I knew the ins and outs ( Rules and Regs, H & S guidelines etc) ….but I wasn’t quite prepared to be charged. The empty shop units had been used for numerous exhibitions over the years and always been free.
But now, it was all under new management ….
After much discussion ( pleading) I eventually managed to get one of the smaller ones for free, but for only a week. Was that enough time? I suppose it will have to be.
Matching my work with Jackie’s – who does architectural drawings, plans and maps, I decided to go back to an earlier project that I had abandoned.
I’d made paper houses out of discarded art magazines. I was quite happy with them, but found that they travelled really badly. With just one outing at a book fair, where I had displayed them on a table next to my books, they came back really crumbled.
They stayed in a box for a few months, until after I had set up the exhibition of my ships at the Chapel Gallery. To secure the ships to a base, I had to add a small strap under each one. This not only provided an anchor , but also gave the ships enough flexibility for me to poke a pen through the hull to reshape the ones that were slightly crushed.
This was such a simple answer, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Instead of adding to the houses, I cut a flap through the bottom of each one. This now gives me the option to staple through the flap to the floor AND to reshape as I go.
With the ones I had to rework and the ones I have made over the weekend, I have a total of almost 200 already.