This week I’ve been thinking a lot about exhibitions. I went to Liverpool with my partner Mark during the recent half term to the Walker Gallery. I’ve been there a few times before but there is always something new to enjoy, so I was pleased to be revisiting it. Our first stop was the sculpture room on the Ground floor. It was a pleasure to be able to take my time admiring the statues of Gods and Goddesses, I so admire the skill of the artists who created these pieces!
Then we went upstairs to visit the amazing Pre-Raphaelite collection before we checked out the exhibition of past winners of the John Moores prize. I can’t imagine what it must be like to win such a competition! I hope the winners really benefited from the exposure and it brought them lots of creative opportunities. I noticed one of the winners had said that they would be able to use the prize money to spend some time making the art they really wanted to for pleasure, rather than having the pressure of trying to make art that would sell. This got me wondering which approach is best? I guess the answer depends on the artist, their circumstances and their own personal motivations.
Looking at the past winners work impressed on me the importance of considering (before you start making it) where your work is going to be exhibited in terms of size and scale. It got me thinking about my own recent exhibition at the Solaris and how small my work looked when displayed in a big white area, rather than in my little studio at college.
Some of my artwork was very colourful (the exhibition had been called ‘the Magic of Colour’) and that was fine against the white walls. However, the paler ‘Triple Moon’ pieces didn’t make much of an impact in that setting. This has inspired me to make a dramatic dark background for my resin triple Moons so that next time they are exhibited they will look much better.
Back home again now, and today I collected my ‘Stardust’ picture from the Grundy gallery where it was part of the Open Exhibition for local artists. Whilst I was collecting my work, I discovered there are plans to change the format for the Open Exhibition next year. The ‘call-out’ to local artists will come earlier in the year (probably November) to give hopeful participants the time to prepare something special in line with the theme of celebrating the 110th anniversary of the Grundy. So that’s interesting…
Finally, it’s going to be time to take down our exhibition from the Solaris on Friday. I can’t believe how quickly the month has passed! Naturally, I am thinking ‘what’s next?’ in terms of exhibitions and events and I’m glad to say I’ll be having a small solo exhibition in the Transit Gallery at college very soon (probably during March)…. so that’ll be my next stop. (In astrology ‘Transit’ is the word we use to describe the movement of the Planets, so it seems like the perfect place to show my Planetary exhibition!). I’ve also got another couple of exhibitions in the pipeline, so watch this space for further developments. But meanwhile, thanks for reading this and here’s one last peep at the Solaris exhibition.
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