Cara Jean FLYNN

1' - Group show at Chelsea

 

Early on in the term, we decided to exhibit as a group at the Chelsea School of Art gallery space 'SWARTS', which seemed like a safe and convenient place for our first show together.

 

We brainstormed a number of different ideas for themes for the exhibition and after a few meetings it was decided through a consensus that we should keep it simple due to the limited time and space we had. Rather than a common theme for the show, we would all create work to a certain size - 1'. This worked well and tied all the pieces together coherently in the exhibition. In retrospect it also allowed us the freedom to continue developing our line of enquiry in our own work rather than presently something new, that I think may have derailed my current thought process.

 

Andrea was key in taking the lead, having organised a number of exhibitions before and I was grateful for her experience. Having only exhibited once before and never self-organised an exhibition, I was keen to learn as much as possible and wasn't really aware of the amount of effort needed in putting on a show. I volunteered to tackle some of the paperwork thrown at us and wrote the risk assessment, as I was familiar with how these were done. Andrea also ran a fantastic Facebook campaign with teaser photos each day which kept the momentum of the exhibition running throughout the three weeks.

 

The private view was well attended and I was impressed with how the curating team had displayed the artworks and how well they worked together, although each very different. The piece I submitted was 'Tidied' which was part of a larger installation piece which I submitted for assessment. Initially unsure as to whether I should submit it as a stand-alone piece, I was relived to find that it worked well within the context of the show.

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Professional Toolkit:

• Collaboration in exhibition development

• Risk assessment

• Creating work to a brief

• Exhibition installation

• Private view event organisation

• Marketing