Develop your final major project presentation with the context and audience for which it is intended.
Considering the context and audience for my work is a very interesting exercise. It forces me to ask who might be interested in my work and why. At the same time, I need to have a strong belief in my ideas and project delivery so that I am not swayed and my message isn’t corrupted by too much concern over who might be offended or upset with my work. While this submission at Project 9 is a final draft there are things I am still working on. The last few minor tweaks will not delay my exhibition. I suspect most projects which go to exhibition feature last-minute changes and fluctuations necessary to fit in with the practicalities of showing work. The particular items which I have been working on include reshooting a video of falling ash. My original piece used an old dust sheet as a backdrop. After feedback, I looked at using a black cloth but trying to isolate the ash. Often the backdrop seems to intrude and come to the fore so producing this work in a way which satisfies me has not been easy. Ultimately it is a choice between how aesthetically pleasing I want this idea to be and whether flaws in the delivery of this particular piece are acceptable to me.
My current and new video selection can be seen at the following links:
Initial video of falling ash – https://youtu.be/SW8WO7f0Jzk
Latest version – https://youtu.be/qoIV9Q1k8qk
One piece of work which has taken up a huge amount of time has been the see-saw which I want to form a centre piece in my exhibition. This child’s plaything represents the balance between life and death. After many months of negotiation and prompting, I have received the pivot for my see-saw. This is a huge lump of over-engineered steel which weighs 37kg. I know this as I paid for postage although the pivot was gifted for free. The wooden scaffold board which will act as the top of the see-saw bolts to the pivot. The pivot needs some work before it is ready to exhibit. The base is not square so the pivot does not balance easily. I have drawn up a design for a socket and steel plate with the pivot will fit into. This means that the see-saw will be in 3 parts; the pivot, the socket and base and the wooden top. Splitting this into three parts which I assemble on site will make transporting it to the exhibition and carrying it up the stairs easier. I need to pass my design to a metal fabricator to complete this work. When the see-saw is ready I want to photograph it as this will feature in zine I am having printed for the exhibition.
I have been working on what size my prints should be and also how these should be mounted. Some images need to be larger to pick out fine detail such as the baby on top of the cliff while some can be smaller. As regards mounting, I will surface mount my images so no frame or border is required. This minimalist approach will permit my audience to focus on my work without distraction. When I first thought about the material on which the photographs sit. I looked at aluminium, wood, MDF, Perspex, acrylic, foamboard, card, composite and clay. My experimentation has led me to the conclusion that I was adding needless choice and complexity which does not add to my project. My images will all use the same type of mount so as to build a sense that the works in my exhibition are part of a whole. I have taken some photographs of the gallery and digitally placed some of my work on the wall which starts to offer me a sense of how my work will look and feel at certain sizes. Along with my choice of the order of my creative work, the titles I will assign to each image and how the introductory text sits within my exhibition are things I have spent a lot of time on over the past few months. I will forward a document with this detail to my tutor rather than post this in my blog.
A blog post detailing my exploration of materials and sizes of my work can be seen at the following link:
https://richarddalgleish.net/late-work-and-choices-for-exhibition/
One important aspect which I need to resolve is my image of a child on the cliff top. I used a found photograph of this which shows the Cliffs of Mohr in County Clare in Ireland. This was a royalty-free image that I edited to suit my needs. I might shoot my own photograph of a cliff instead of using a stock photo.
I have produced a short zine in the form of a tabloid news sheet as a record of the exhibition and as a concrete artefact which will exist long after the exhibition been taken down. This is shown below: