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| Flyer Design by Louise Byng. Cover Image '8pm' © Kate Brinkworth |
So this week it was our turn to step up to the curation plate. With Marlene Smith to guide and council us, me and my curator comrades Jade Foster, Lizzie Smith and Elizabeth Stansfield have hastily devised and produced 'Still Life', an exhibition exploring how cinematic images can generate nostalgia for spaces and times that we haven't experienced. Initially being mutually inspired by a few key pieces that were presented to us by the artists, a Laura Mulvey quote cemented the context in which we wanted to show them together: "Behind the movement of cinema is the stillness of the individual frame."
It was quite a tough project at first because me, Jade, Beth & Lizzie were very different practitioners at different stages of our development and at times our selection process and changeable plan of action became a bit exhausting. With opposing approaches and opinions in the group, countless pieces of art were deliberated over, but after a lot of pitching, a little begging and a smidge of secretly hiding pieces of work (desperate measures) the result was a true group exhibition with a new individual voice created from many. The challenge of the process led to a more considered outcome than I could ever have achieved alone, and heck, by the end we had all gone a bit barmy, fallen in love with each other and formed a killer girl band called The Chevrons.
Beth said it best ~
Elizabeth Stansfield @estansfieldI had such a blast working on #theopenproject with @ByngSquirrel @MagicFace_ and @jayjayblackk . A new family of hysteria and creativity.
We suddenly had become the most sentimental group by far, celebrating Marlene's birthday with a charming caterpillar cake and collecting photographs and other traces from the exhibition to share with the audience. Aside from this disgraceful bout of genuine cuteness, one of the most successful parts of the show was our use of Curator's Corner, where we wrote quotes from the selected artists' statements on the wall and invited the public to explore what Still Life means to them through an interactive yet losely focused brainstorm; a technique that worked well and generated some interesting discussions about the new impacts of documenting our existence, such as life being narrated through social media.
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| L-R: George Allen 'A BBC Building That Is Now A Car Park'; Robin Pugh 'Locus 14'; Richard Haig 'Code' |
We're all very proud of what we made here together and I know I learnt a lot from working with my three crazy ladies on such a fast-paced gallery bonanza. A huge thank you to everyone who visited the show, every single artist that submitted work and took the time to talk to us about it, and all the kind mac minions that helped us along the way.
Viva la Chevrons.
