Yesterday, I finished installing an exhibition of work by NML’s Youth Engagement Forum. They’re a collective of young people who meet up at Liverpool Museums .
At the moment, all of the Liverpool museums ( World Museum, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Museum plus several more not in the city centre ) are on strike due to a pay dispute.
So to cut a long story short, I was asked, as a freelancer there, if I would deal with this exhibition.
It was a difficult situation, but the exhibition had been planned for such a long time and CassArts ( where it was going to be held) were fully booked well into the future. Pulling out would mean them losing their slot indefinitely. Plus, the theme of the exhibition was International Women’s day – happening this week.
What should have been a few hours work, turned out to be quite time consuming in the end. The students had sent me their statements, but they were all in different fonts and sizes, so that itself took a while to clean up.
I then had to join the main library to use their printing facilities. That was challenging, but I’d put it down as a learning experience for me – having never needed to use public pcs and printers before. Thanks to the wonderful staff there though for teaching idiot me how to print in colour 🙄
On arriving at the exhibition I found that most of the work was on paper, so that was just a case of spacing it out and attaching it to the wall with White Tac ( not allowed to use anything else on the walls there)
Three of the works were framed , but they hadn’t attached any method of hanging on the back . Cass Arts have a wire and hook system .
Having had enough by then and not fancying traipsing round town to look for string or wire, I thought the easiest thing to do was just take them home and fix them there.
Returning on day two ( via the library again to print off more things ) I installed the final works.
I do hope people get to see the exhibition . Obviously the museum won’t be able to publicise the exhibition as they normally would.
