Other projects

Yet another month has flown by, so it must seem to readers of this blog that nothing has been happening.

Far from it...  the four of us have been working on individual projects which have taken up a considerable amount of time.
Jane  has her ‘On the Edge’ project which will be shown as part of Future Station at Metal, Edge Hill.
Sue has been working on the documentation for the Poste project and is also preparing for the Wirral Open Studios event mid November.
Christine is getting ready for Group Three at the Six Rooms Gallery in Birkenhead which opens on 4 November.
...and I have been in Group Two at Six rooms, in which I have also been running children's workshops. Next week, I'll be hanging a group exhibition ( with Soup Collective ) at Blackburne House, which also opens on 4 November and week after, also with Soup Collective - we have an exhibition at Tate Liverpool. PV will coincide with Liverpool's 'Long Night' on 18 November.

Moving on

I can't believe that it's almost a month since the last post. The time has just whizzed by. Although the gallery had been open for a year, it wasn't very well known to the gallery visiting public, so it was mainly due to the Independents publicity that people wandered in. As an evaluation : over 400 people visited the exhibition and PVs.  The comments book was filled by pages and pages of excellent words of praise and we had several good review write ups. Halfway through the exhibition, we were approached by MerseyBio - part of Liverpool University, and asked if the exhibition could tour to them next. On Monday 18 October, The Gallery exhibition came down and was transported to the new venue.   Photos courtesy of Alison Bailey Smith

Images from the exhibition

  

Images courtesy of Billy Wilson, Ian and Minako Jackson     

Invigilating

Its really quite depressing to invigilate an exhibition... Of course, it's great when people come in and want to chat, but you can also go long periods without seeing anyone at all.

There's times when you just feel like packing up and going home...and then someone comes in with the intention of reviewing the show...

It's really good to get a mention somewhere:

http://www.artinliverpool.com/blog/2010/09/about-here-at-the-gallery-liverpool/

and

http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/reviews/about_here.php

The PV

We decided to have two Private Viewings. The opening night - 17 September, was the same opening night as not only all of the International venues - but also of several other Independents. We reckoned that being away from town, would put off the regular Private viewers who had a lot to see elsewhere that night. We need not have worried - there were in the region of 200 visitors. A lot of whom were travelling from quite a distance.  They visited in waves.... some trying to get to as many viewings as possible that night, but others staying for the duration.

The Layout

The preconceived ideas we had about where each work should be situated before the exhibition had to be re thought. Most of the artists wanted clean white walls and a lot of space around the work, but this was a debatable issue - not just within the artists group, but also with how the gallery usually works. Big decisions and compromises were made.

We also decided against the usual system for this gallery, to have wall panels and labels next to the work. This was too distracting.
It meant extra work in placing numbers next to each work and then typing up a list, but this helped with the 'clean' look we originally aimed for.

On top of the extra time needed to plan the layout, Sue's work - creating the shape of the 'Spoor' trail and then preparing the wall panel in order to paint the names and places of origin took two full days.

About Here

Monday 13 September

It's difficult to say when to start a blog, as although this week heralds the start of working together as a team for the first time, getting to this stage has taken a year of planning. 

The four of us: Jane Hughes, Sue Meyerhoff Sharples, Christine O'Reilly Wilson and Wendy Williams, knew each other through the exhibition circuit. We liked and admired each others work and each had a strong exhibition background.

We knew from working  individually on previous Biennials, that all venues in Liverpool get booked up very early at this time of year, so began the look out for spaces last summer.   

We needed a venue that was large and airy enough to give each of us space around each of our works and it was fortunate that we heard about a new gallery opening at that time  http://www.thegalleryliverpool.co.uk/

The gallery was booked for the opening month of the Biennial.....and the work began.

We wanted to change the look of the gallery space so that the emphasis could be shifted from its usual commercial use, to an  Independent Biennial host venue.This meant shifting the temporary walls within the gallery to open the space and to change it's dynamics. We lost a day in terms of being able to hang the work because of this, but the results were worth it.