Organising

We decided we wanted to show case our caving residencies in a group exhibition about enclosed spaces. The end result was Hollow Chambers at the Crypt Gallery. The show exhibited 30 artists work from post graduate students and UAL alumni.

Different perspectives: Everyone’s in charge vs No ones in charge. Can you organise an exhibition using a Deluzian non hierarchical organisational structure? Yes you can- Hollow Chambers. But it needs everyone to have personal ownership and the collective to want it to succeed.

Admin

To enable the collaborative organisation of the exhibition we used an online project organising platform called basecamp. Everyone could access, look at and edit the documents created which meant everyone had input into tasks. Decisions were taken by the majority. Team members volunteered to organise different parts of the project depending on their strengths and time. The Organisers were Silvia, Denise, Jeremy, Jenny and myself. To qualify for postgraduate funding of £900 we had to include with in the organisational team students from other courses and other colleges. This was a brilliant idea as working with students from other courses was a great experience. Jeremy from MA painting ( I met him in the print room) and Jenny from MFA Central St Martins ( Silvia met her while invigilating the 1000 configurations show in Lewisham when Jenny came to see the show as she saw it advertised on the postgraduate newsletter.)

Parts of the project I led on were:

Selecting work for the show from over 50 applicant. I suggested the use of red/ amber/ green cards in a voting system. Looking at the submissions 4 of us voted and the colours were recorded. Majority green or mixture green/ amber votes meant the artists were selected.

Communicating with the artists. Writing the acceptance/ declined emails. I designed the artist’s details form that the artists had to complete and the emails to be sent out. I organised the PayPal site for the artist £20 contributions. I organised the invigilation timetable which the artists signed up for time slots on survey monkey. I did most of the communicating with the artists via email. I phoned and chased artists that forgot their invigilation.

Planning the hanging of the show with Silvia and Jenny. We visited the gallery twice before installation. We made a map of the space including plug sockets and lights and dimensions. On the second visit we I took print outs of the artists work to the space and we decided where each artist would show. We then had a map of the space ready for Jeremy who was to coordinate the installation of the work.

Coordinating the event talk given by the Mendip Caving Group representative.

Issues

Chasing artists for not returning their forms on time. This took a lot of emailing and admin time. Chasing artists for paying on time- 3 artists did not pay. I decided not to chase them after asking 3 times as I didn’t feel it was appropriate to have an argument about it. In future it could be that the artist’s work is taken down if they do not pay. Chasing artists about invigilation. Invigilation seems to be a recurring issue and it was also a problem in the Dissecting the Archive show we organised. I am still amazed that some artists don’t honour their invigilation commitments. Generally it was the artists from Central St Martins and I think that they as they did not have a relationship to maintain with us they thought they could get away with not turning up.