I've spent the last couple of weeks preparing for the forthcoming exhibition at HIVE with my partner Mark. First, we had a further chat with the organisers of the HIVE artists group regarding our opening evening. This was disappointing because the venue owners decided it would be best not to have a 'Private View' evening because of COVID regulations. It was is a shame, but I understood that we are all limited and have to be sensible in light of the current pandemic. It also reminded me how lucky we are to be having any kind of physical exhibition right now, as so many things have been cancelled this year or have had to be online only.
HIVE artisan Coffee Shop, Church Street, Blackpool
(number one on trip advisor!)
I popped into HIVE for a measure up, so I could plan what they layout for my part of the exhibition. I wanted to be clear about what I'd be hanging and make sure it looked as good as possible when it went up. This was a really good thing to do and I learned to do this as a result of not doing it for my exhibition at the Solaris back in February! (This was when I first learned about scale - I discovered that the resin planets I made looked fairly big in my studio at college but looked so much smaller in the long corridor at the Solaris). I didn't want to make this kind of mistake again.
Planets on display at the Solaris exhibition.
There were five sections suitable for exhibiting in the room and I decided to exhibit my work on two of these; one area on a white wall and the red wall next to it. My partner Mark had already got enough work to fill the other three spaces (in fact he could have filled all the walls) but as it was a joint exhibition we shared the space out as fairly as practical. We decided we both wanted to make one or two new pieces of work to include in this exhibition.
'The Evidence of Jennet Device' by Mark Hetherington.
Although I had plenty of wall space, I wanted to limit my work to pieces relevant to the theme. I thought this would look more professional and 'together' this way even if that meant there would be a fair bit of 'white space' around the pieces. I had seen other people exhibit this way and thought it gave a clean, confident and professional impression.
The basic concept for our exhibition was 'witches' (as Halloween is at the end of the month) and Mark suggested the title 'A Discovery of Witches' to suggest the witches of both past and present. The work Mark wanted to include was about the 17th Century Pendle Witches and the work I was going to include modern-day Witches.
Rough wall plan from my sketchbook
As you can see from the diagram above, I have planned to exhibit my large triple moon as the central image for the red wall. This is a modern-day reference to the Divine Feminine Deity known commonly as 'the Witches Goddess' and the waxing and waning crescent around the central full moon represent the three aspects of this Goddess which are maiden, mother and crone. (Hutton, 1999, p.36). Witches nowadays often gather to celebrate the full moon and they also work with the planetary energies - so I will be including some of my circular resin and acrylic planets around this central triple moon.
Our poster/flyer for the forthcoming exhibition.
On the white wall, I intend to exhibit one of the first pieces I made at Blackpool School of Arts which features a cloaked woman (a witch) out at night under the full moon. It is an obvious choice for this theme and it's been my most popular artwork to date, so I feel reasonably confident about showing it.
Castlerigg at the winter solstice by Kathy Rowan
Around this main image, I am going to display my latest pieces. I have been working on these over the summer and just need to create one more piece to make the display look well balanced. These new pieces feature some of the sacred sites in the UK that I have visited. These are places where witches gather and I like to believe they have gathered for centuries. I have used mixed media including beeswax to create these pieces. My intention is for the wax to add a sense of the ethereal. In some places, it is translucent, in others opaque. I like the way it covers the work in a magical mist, hinting at unseen realities beneath.
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