Last night was the opening of our Colonize Revisited exhibition at Arena Gallery and I’ve been so tired today, all I’ve done is flitted from one thing to another, unable to focus for more than ten minutes at a time. Thankfully it’s my day off, but still, I feel like I’ve wasted the day.
It was a good opening – lots of people there and they seemed genuinely interested in the work and how we got there. It was so hot in that tiny space though and I was starting to feel the bugs that had been circulating round the people I’d been in contact with, slowly taking hold of my throat and pulling tighter.
I wanted to talk to more people, but it hurt to do so and my eyes were watering badly. I held out almost to the last half hour though, which was pretty good going.
It’s been an incredibly long week. The install began Tuesday, but all I could do was go straight from work to help out. My lunch hours were filled with printing things off and checking information for the wall labels. A long job, given that there were so many guest artists. Carol Ramsay was curating the exhibition and while I was in work, she would send me an image as things progressed, so that I could type out an artist list and prices – using the photo as a guide. Crazy way of doing things, but what else could I do if couldn’t be be there all of the time? There were tears and tantrums and missing work (hence the hasty printing up of requested jpgs) and two either hung back to front ( sorry Sophie) or upside down. ( no instructions on works!) I wish someone would do all this for me one day. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to be invited to an exhibition and have art handlers and gallery staff do all of this ‘bitty’ stuff for me.
Instead, I’m tired and run down and tomorrow I have to invigilate on my day off. Ah well, at least I had today…in the sun, just wasting time.
Actually, something quite nice happened today. I got an email from axis saying that I was one of this week’s ‘5 to watch’. Kind of tickled me. Finally…someone is saying watch me ha ha. I wonder if … hmmm… never mind.
http://www.axisweb.org/features/spotlight/five2watch-liverpool/
