First year show - Plymouth College of Art, Painting, Drawing & Printmaking
- Georgia-May Pollard @GrimmPandaDESIGNS
- Aug 26, 2016
- 3 min read
When I started my first year or Painting Drawing & Printmaking BA at Plymouth college of art I had a vague idea that part of the first year I would be involved with planning a show with my fellow students on my course.At first the prospect of this made me nervous of all our voices being heard equally but once we had established several groups ( Curators , Logistics, Fundraising, Marketing ) it became clear where different peoples skills were.
I myself was on the curators team being because I like to be organised and figured it would help me to get to know people a bit more through forcing myself into a situation where you can't be organised if you don't connect with people to get things done. On this team we were responsible for a number or very integral aspects leading to the success of the show. We had to organise ourselves outside of college time to meet up and discuss where we thought the show should go and then feed back this information to the whole group on Tuesday afternoons, as well as connecting with other groups.
Once I had a path to take with my work I much ran with that until I had developed it to a point where I was happy to layout and display my work to the public. I chose to go with collograph plates for several reasons, they are cheap to make and if you make a mistake it is usually pretty easy to rectify, unpredictable textures depending on what items or wall papers used. By the end of the term i had several small canvas bags full of materials including sequins, tins , pie cases ,string , different textured paper and thicknesses, you can change your plates pretty easily if there is overlapping or a texture that you don't like. You can also be quite illustrative with them if you have a sharp knife and steady hand.
I had worked out that I was going to base my project on, travel from Plymouth to Ipswich and LDRs (Long Distance Relationships).I set about experimenting with weights of paper, wall paper , sequins, string to detail in making illustrative plates about the details of my travels.The final plates which had been tried and tested several times were laid on Japanese bamboo and rag paper are titled " The Adventures of Limpet & Blondie" after the travels and adventures that Matt Baker I have had from December 2015 onwards. The collographs worked the way that I needed them to in order to create narrative, I decided to take on more responsibility within the group. This started off with taking minutes and creating emails so that everyone including the part time students could access so that people knew of any new developments.
Part of the curator's job was to plan out where the work people were creating would be going.
This however was difficult because our group had several other modules on the go ( research for artists , complementary studies , contextuals essay ) so a lot of people were understandably stressed about deadlines and being able to plan effectively , as was I. Hannah Davis had managed to get a local art space interested in hosting our show through going to one of their open days to try to raise money to save the space from being turned into another pub or apartment building. The space that Comma 5 artists are using on the Barbican Plymouth used to be the home of Robert Lenkiewicz, couldn't have been a better fit! The space was challenging to hang artwork but with everyone helping we got it done quite quickly.
Being involved with the show has given me many different skills which I will use again and again. Things like not being afraid to voice my opinions where necessary, Being able to handle multiple different aspects of planning and helping to organise or advise others , and being able to be involved in a real Art world experience.
Thankyou to all who Helped make the Plymouth College of Art Painting Drawing & Printmaking BA First year and of year show a success.Hannah Davis, Helen Coakes-Blundell, Teresa Stabb, Terri Turner Humphreys , Karen Saxby, Dawn Trewhella, Guy Barkley Smith, Marc Corfield, Chris Stopha.
Tutors, Majella Clancy and Stephen Felmingham I can't thank enough for all your support, Heres to the next show !
Thankyou to Comma 5 art Space for letting us host our show in your space.
Tim Pearse and Philip Bath and Liz Barile- Page
