In-depth Group Meeting

9th January 

 This was our first large group meeting in which we could bring all of our ideas together and develop them for our exhibition. Today we wanted to put together a basic plan for our exhibition so individually or as small groups we can begin the process of creating our exhibition to a high standard with every element fully covered and explored. 

  Meeting Progression:

• We need to write a formal letter of intent to ask artists if we can use their work within our exhibition. This letter of intent needs to be thorough and professional it needs to contain the dates in which we are due to hold the exhibition, what the artists can expect from us, an invitation to a informal interview in which we can discuss the concept and ideas behind their work. Julia has offered to write this letter with input from the rest of the group. 

•  We need to finalize a list of artists that we are all particularly interested in. We each individually provided feedback to the group of the artists that we would like to see in our exhibition. We then discussed these and how they would relate to one another and link together as a theme. The artists that the group were most passionate about being in our exhibition are as follows: 

                    -The string cube- Sukhjinder Nahal
                    -The glass slippers - Becky Price
                    -Pencil portraits of women - Irene Kaseavic
                    -Mixed media abstract paintings -Jack Marder  
                    -Magpie paintings - Riba Begum 

• As our exhibition finishes on Valentines Day we decided that we should somehow subtly link our exhibition to this public celebration. Anna suggested the word Ethereal as a base to link the above artists work together. This soft, delicate word that links to Valentines Day it also has a chemical meaning which links to the paint within the paintings and our last project involving the use of salt. Other suggested themes: Fantasy/Fairytale this links to the majority of the artwork especially the slippers which suggests Cinderella, it can also be related to Ethereal and so these could be combined. The theme of focusing on the Small was an interesting concept as we have picked a number of small objects there are also many more within the studios that we could look at if we were to chose this theme for our exhibition. Another theme was Cellular this would create quite an organic exhibition that focuses on the spherical shape.  

• After much consideration and thought we have decided for now to go with the theme of Ethereal as it fits the pieces we have chosen perfectly, it is also quite open ended and so leads us to many different explorations of the theme.   

• After researching various exhibitions as a group we have decided the most successful course of conduct will be to alter the space to suit the exhibition rather than curating a typical conventional White Cube style show. The possibility of using light, voile materials draped around the exhibition and over the various artworks. This would link to ethereal producing tones of femininity, spirituality and mystery which mirrors the definition of ethereal. This will soften the space we will also use lighting to our advantage, perhaps fairy lights or colour changing lights to add to the atmosphere and exaggerate our theme of ethereal. Another idea is to use fans which will gently move the fabric, constantly altering the shape as the viewer explores the space.

• We briefly discussed the exhibition itself in particular the opening night and whether we hold a private viewing or not. As a group we have decided it would be perhaps be more effective to hold a private viewing as it gives us the opportunity to discuss the exhibition with the tutors. It will also allow us to put on a food spread with beverages and perhaps some light music to create a social event for the opening night. 

In this meeting we discussed lots of ideas and concepts for our exhibition. All in all a very successful meeting!