This week was the opening of our collective pre-degree show exhibition, ‘Yoke’. For this show each student was asked to submit at least one object that was representative of their practice (after some deliberation, mentioned in a previous post, I chose to create a sign post pointing in many different directions). The show works as both a preview to our degree show, a way to generate interest, and a method of trying things out. It is not a large show, we had to fit it all into a cabinet that is outside our studios.
The title ‘Yoke’ came as a way in which we could explain the concept for our show. A yoke is a tool used on farms to harness together two animals in order to pull a heavy weight. The word also has connections in many languages to the idea of collection and connection.
I have mentioned before how the work produced on CFAP is all of a very different nature is hard to connect to one another. We chose to play with this idea of creating connections between the objects that were arbitrary and unimportant in the context of the work. We did this through an hour long discussion in which over 300 connections between the objects were offered up. These connections were displayed on a poster covering one half of the cabinet, with the objects in the other half. The objects are not labelled, though during our discussion they had been assigned letters which appear on the poster. It is up to the spectator to create their own connections in much the same way as we did.
For this show we split into three groups that fed back to the whole group. These were, curatiorial, promotional and practical. I was involved with the practical side, helping to source the materials we needed, building shelves, painting the space and working out any other practical issues. It’s been a great help for our degree show, and we all seem to have worked out which roles we are best suited to.
