Develop and refine your promotional strategy and begin to actualise it. Review the Enterprise Hub resources Promoting yourself and Showcasing your work.

• Networks, audiences, and collaborations – provides guidance and links to connect with others.
• Online marketing tools – helps you to consider your online presence.
• Writing CVs, Bios, Statements, and Manifestos – has guidance on writing about you and your work.
• Produce an artist statement.

Articulate your progress clearly and concisely regarding your promotional strategy. Reflect on any challenges and action areas.

Record your findings in your learning log.

I have been looking at venues for my exhibition. I have looked both online and in person. For traditional spaces, an in-person visit seem better as they allow me to question staff, curators or even sometimes the artist. A great example of this in-person contact happened this weekend at the Fringe by the Sea which takes place in my local town. It brings comedy, music, literature, performance and a Makers Market of local arts and crafts. https://www.fringebythesea.com/coulters-makers-market/ I visited a few times, taking pictures, chatting to the stallholders and hearing about the concept of shared selling space between different artists. I shared my own story about loss and was struck that immediately there was a very clear emotional response from people who have also experienced loss. It was revealing to me that there is a need for space to give voice to our sense of grief. Coming out of these conversations a curator / owner of Leith Makers was telling me of exhibition space she hosts in a space under what was the old Leith railway line. I have contact details and will go and see the gallery space and chat further with the people there. Thoughts of pricing my work have not really crossed my mind before as was always more interested in telling my story so this is all new and exciting for me. I suppose that there is no compelling reason to sell my work if I don’t want to.

https://leithmakers.co.uk/index.html#/

I will visit the gallery where I been invited to host my exhibition and will add some images here of what I find and some thoughts on the space and how it makes me feel and how I imagine my work in that space.

I will submit a new version of my work for exhibition thinking much more deeply about the order of my work which has been a very instructive exercise for me. It will be interesting to receive more feedback now I am further down this path. When I have a settled body of work for my exhibition I will think much more about the promotion of my work. At this stage having potentially found a site for my exhibition I want to explore the idea of an abandoned property in which to replicate my exhibition but in a very different space.

If I pursue the option of showing my work in an abandoned building, there is work for me to do to find a suitable space. I have some ideas on locations I have visited in the Hebrides. This would be an easier location rather than using abandoned properties in Italy for simple reason that it is closer. I imagine such an exhibition as lasting just long enough for me to video it. Would a different option be to leave work in situ for longer and if property is open to the weather to see how my work deteriorates through time? The second exhibition in a traditional gallery could feature the video of the exhibition in the abandoned property as well as normal framed pieces and the see-saw. This would bring my work to a bigger audience. Lots of work here and things to consider.

As part of my thinking about the exhibition and as a way of introducing myself and my work, i have written an Artist’s Statement:

I have experienced the physical impacts and the mental trauma of the death of my daughter. My research and the creation of my art are ways for me to understand myself and express the sense of loss that is common to so many of us, to find threads of memory and to explore the threshold between life and death. I have studied photography but my art doesn’t just use the photograph to depict literal expressions of loss, I also work with conceptual ideas. The photograph is a medium frequently used by those who are exposed to loss yet where the motives and understanding of why photography is used at such times is less than clear. In researching my project and building my exhibition, I have engaged with many people, delving deep into my memories. My art uses these personal insights, common threads and shared experiences to explore this inevitable part of life which is often pushed aside.

The last thing I wanted to think about in this exercise is my promotional strategy. I have given this little thought so far as I have been more concerned with editing my exhibition works to find a better flow or narrative. As I think about gallery space and the possibility of using non-tradition space of an abandoned building, Things to consider are who I will speak to tell tell about my work and how will I engage with them. Family, friends, OCA classmates, my tutor, and people who used to study with OCA, the alumni all come to mind. This an easy group to engage with through phonecalls, email, the OCA forum, and the alumni group on AfterOCA@groups.io. Beyond that are people I don’t know in the wider world. For the gallery in Leith, there is their website and posters in the window. I can put information about my exhibition on my personal website, on Instagram or other social media platforms. For the second part of my exhibition in an abandoned property, I would try and utilise local noticeboards although this all depends on how I see this element of exhibition developing, whether a pop-up exhibition lasting just long enough to video or a longer period of time during which my work might be impacted by the weather.

This is a good point in the process to also begin to decide on what to leave behind, or shelve until after you have graduated. These could be ideas hovering in the background or creative possibilities emerging in the work. 

Use your notebook to record them so they can be returned to at another time. 

My Major Project is building and taking shape althought nothing is yet finalised or rock solid and much can still be changed. Early test pieces such as those featuring the boy and the cat which I explore in post below, I have now abandoned as the idea too muddled and not defined or ceratin enough. Tis image of the boy and the cat came from a pack of images from 1930s Germany. There is an emotional impact in considering what became of this boy. So maybe a future project could explore this idea.

Similarly I have moved away from my general exploration of corruption and the glitch which I show in a post below:

While there is one piece which I might well carry forward into my project, I do not consider that my Major Project is the place for a widespread exploration into gitches. It just doesn’t seem to fit with my thoughts.

Outside of my current project, there is a lot of work from earlier in my studies that I want to revisit and rethink now I am almost through level 3. The research and thinking part of my practice has grown a lot since I first worked on some of these projects and I feel there is scope for valuable rework. In addition, there are new projects I am considering, existing collaborations and new chances to engage externally whether on open calls or residencies. I would also like to build upon experiences such as my recent application for funding which has just been returned with the following comment, “We recognised the opportunity which the project offered for your creative and professional development. While your application was recommended for funding, in the context of a highly competitive funding round, it was not possible to prioritise your application over others under consideration.”  This application is one I will adjust and resubmit and will use the experience as a positive I will take forwards with me once I leave the OCA. Another potential avenue I been considering is a postgrad course in Art Psychotherapy which would open door to teach Art Therapy and would be interesting way to use my experiences. Many of the projects I mention above are too time-intensive to pursue to completion or even to investigate in depth at this stage so I will be very selective on which works add a positive to aid my major project and which works can be placed on the back burner.

We suggest at this stage, you take a detailed look at the Learning Outcomes for this unit and the tutor feedback you have received. Making sure you are on track to meet them all by the end of this unit. 

This is a good reminder about the learning outcomes. Previously in my level 3 studies for 3.1 and 3.2, I have referenced separate blog posts to show how I have met learning outcomes. As I approach the end of 3.3, I want to compile a more holistic view of my work showing which artists have influenced my project, the research and theory which underpins my work, the feedback I have received and how I have responded to this, a view of my thoughts and tests and more. In working on this before the end of my unit, this will give me time to reflect and to ensure that I am showing my thinking process for the assessor at the end of my degree. In bringing these different strands together in one document, I feel this will give a more cohesive foundation to my work and a more user-friendly way of engaging with my tutor and assessor. From a purely selfish point of view, I hope that this will improve my final mark awarded at the end of my degree.

I won’t detail my leaning outcomes in detail here but instead will submit these to my tutor for feedback seperately from this blog.

If you took the opportunity to present your work during Project 5 you might already have a selection of reflective thoughts and feedback from various audiences. Using these as a starting point spend some time looking back over the work you have made, thinking critically about its themes, methods, ethics and what it communicates to an audience. Check this with your personal aims for the work and your practice as a whole. You may need to adjust the work you plan to make or the plan, either is fine.

I have received valuable feedback from my tutor, my peer group of fellow OCA students and of people who attended the same artist’s residency as me.  These comments although from different sources, seemed to follow a similar path with comments about being more definite about my narrative, in shaping the order of the work which makes up my major project to define the flow of my work and help identify duplication and find any gaps, all to tell my story logically and clearly. Comments were raised about whether my work was suited to an exhibition or a book. One of the major choices here about the pace at which an audience could absorb a body of work. A walk around an exhibition has a very different feel in terms of time than does looking through a book. Having said this, it is entirely possible to look at one image in an exhibition for a long time. Another consideration with a book is the turning of the page. This provides separation from one work to the next. My feeling here is that I am drawn to the temporary nature of an exhibition, a real exhibition with works in a gallery or or maybe a non-traditional space, as opposed to a virtual gallery. This temporary aspect of my exhibition where it can be seen then it vainshes seems to mirror life and sudden death. More general feedback comments related to my project having a very strong personal involvement which again relates to the narrative or flow of the work I present. Ihave been thinking about how to present my work, whether I try and find a traditional gallery setting or a non-traditional setting, perhaps outdoors or in an abandoned property. This second option might mean I get fewer visitors, but a different way of presenting my work might be to make a video of the exhibition. This would be a huge improvement over a 100% digital exhibition which I have been experimenting with. A video would then act as a gateway for my work and could sit on my personal website and allow a much larger potential audience to see my major project. I received some very positive feedback from my peers on this idea. One said that the idea of holding an exhibition somewhere which might have very few or even no visitors is an interesting way of responding to grief as something we often deal with on our own. Another gave me feedback, “Your idea of staging the exhibition in an abandoned location is intriguing; the desolate setting would underscore the sense of emptiness after a loss. There is a poetic beauty to abandoned places that words cannot fully capture, but this essence can be conveyed through your photographs. I can envision how this would come across powerfully, and a filmed documentary could serve as a compelling addition.” This second element of the exhibition needs careful thought. In simple planning terms, I would need to find a suitable property which would mean looking online but more likely visiting the area. I would need to investigate ownership and permissions. This might mean speaking to local residents or the local council. For property that has been abandoned for much longer and might be missing its roof, this permission element might be of less importance, although I can imagine it would depend on location, ownership of the land on which the property sits and how close the abandoned property might be to other properties. I would need to consider how safe the property is and whether the floor is rotten for example. On a different level, I need to consider how place interacts with meaning and narrative.

I have been thinking long and hard about the order of the work and how I communicate my personal message about loss and grief to my audience. I have compiled a new order and introduced some new works to address the balance of my major project between the actual and the conceptual. I still have doubts about the end of my exhibition. Perhaps that end piece will fall into place when I lay my hands on the see-saw. One of the main questions within this rethinking is whether or not I make Rebecca’s image part of my project. When I wrote my dissertation I made a conscious decision to exclude her image from my list of illustrations. My thinking was that her image means so much more to me than it did to my audience, and how could I begin to communicate a sense of her from an image? I think my audience might expect to see her. In my revised sequence I have thought long about this point. I will seek more feedback on this revised sequence and on the new works within this sequence I show for the first time.