I'm coming to the end of my MA in Fine Art and so along with getting together my documentation for our final unit, I'm thinking about our end of degree exhibition. I've worked out what I want to do and have no idea if it's going to work or not. I like that feeling... and hate it...
Facebook reminded me of an exhibition I did that opened 4 years ago today. I thought I'd share that with you.
In my first year at Chelsea College of Art (where I did a BA in Fine Art), we had to do a group exhibition. If I'm remembering correctly, we weren't supposed to choose the group we exhibited with - the idea was that we all put our interests on post-it notes and stuck them up on the wall near other post it notes with related interests... or something (I can't quite remember). Our group knew we wanted to work together, so we just decided what to write on the post-it notes and stuck them together in a group. Ha!
We knew we wanted to do a site-specific installation, so we started to look for spaces. We didn't want to have to pay for the space, if we could help it. I met with a company that owns loads of properties in the West End to see if we could use one of their vacant spaces. We were open to using ANYTHING - an empty shop, cafe, office - whatever it was, we'd do an installation specifically for that space. They were very interested, but in the end we couldn't make the dates work out...
I used to work at DNA Films and asked if they had any free space we could use as they were in a pre-production stage and so didn't have many people in the building. They had two spaces and were happy for us to use them. One was a large office with big windows and the other was the basement, which they sometimes used as an offline edit suite during production. I went to look at both of them...
After loads of meetings with the group discussing various options of installations we could do, we settled on using the basement. We'd decided to do a VHS Rental Shop... and we'd each make a short film to show in it.
This is the space as we found it.
We then set about planning, making and acquiring everything we'd need. I got onto Freecycle and eBay to find VHS tapes. So many people had boxes and boxes of VHSs in their lofts. Charity shops no longer take them and they didn't want to just chuck them in a landfill... I also got PILES of film posters from shops and cinemas...
We'd decided that we'd make everything out of cardboard in homage to the film Be Kind Rewind.
We had to put up a display at a 'fair' at Chelsea in order to show others what we're doing and get people interested in it...
We made a website - still available here.
We all made VHS covers for our short films. Here's mine.
We'd worked out that it was going to take about 3 days to set up the exhibition... The first day we cleared the room, moved furniture and stuck a bunch of posters up on the walls.
The next day we built the shelves and the front desk and sorted through all the tapes and put them in categories.
We were super happy at the end of that day cos it was looking AWESOME!
On the final day of set-up we didn't have a huge amount to do, but we were having our private view that night - so we had to finish setting up our installation AND set it up for a party.
We added lots of spare videos in piles around for set dressing, we covered the black curtains with red fabric to give it more of a 'cinema' feel, we set out the popcorn and drinks.
IT LOOKED AMAZING
We changed our clothes for the party and were VERY happy.
We opened the next day and had loads of people come. Our tutors came to give us a crit. A few people thought that we were just showing our videos in an already existing video shop! It was so much fun...
The short film I made for the exhibition is here. One of my tutors said he initially thought it was an actual 1950s film until he saw a modern car in one of the shots!
My MA installation isn't going to be quite this ambitious, I think... It's just me working on it... but I'll do what I can...
I loved the film when I first saw it and love it even more now. Beautiful. Feels very French with the music. George is so like his Dad.
I love how the film embraces two mediums .
It has caught the childlike wonder perfectly
make a wish toss your coin .
Enchanting stuff.
What a lovely boy you have.