I have chosen to hold my exhibition at Speculation Gallery, a local space in a village near the coast. I will be holding an early evening launch on 17th August and it will be open to the public from 17th -24th August. The gallery has a number of advantages over others in the area and the arrangements have been much less complicated than other ways of displaying my work might have been (e.g. permissions relating to an installation on a beach, in a town centre or school).
Speculation Gallery was opened this year and is a working artist’s studio as well as a community shop, post office and cafe. This setting will be visited by local people as well as holiday makers and contacts that I invite to attend. There is parking nearby. Other work by the resident artists and other artists will be on display and for sale. As well as a long straight wall there are four 3 sided ‘booths’ along an opposite wall. The largest of these is to be cleared of the work of others for my work. I will also be able to have a small table to display items, either those found on beaches, those made using images of found items, a visitors comments book, a leaflet about myself, and an order form. I hope to make postcards and cards available with the exhibition as well as a zine booklet. Each image with have a luggage tag with title and price.
I have 3 white surfaces with a hanging rail and multiple options for nylon strings and hooks to attach my work to. The main panel measures 2.4 meters high and 2 metres wide and each side panel is 2.4 metres high x 1.2 metres wide.
This week I have completed sunrise trips to three beaches to collect images and materials. My sub-heading to the title Beauty and the Beach… will be 3s or Threes. This reflects the three panels, beaches and ways of looking at and seeing my images. It also reflects three ways of making the images: straight shots, some digital enhancement of straight shots and a more radical scanning of materials and digital processing to create a new collection ‘Re-Vue’ which is a recycling of rubbish but not in the way one might expect.
The displays on each panel could be as simple as three images one underneath the other or set in a diagonal formation, or as sets of nine in three tryptics. I have wondered about showing finds from each beach on separate panels and about showing a landscape image, object as found and object as scanned on each panel and look forward to the views of others as well as playing with scaled mock-ups to see what works best.
I will be able to host the launch and intend to have ‘specimens’ in bell jars on the display table and perhaps on each of the cafe tables.
Since writing this for week 6 of the course I have been encouraged by comments received in webinars to think about losing the subtitling and also setting out my images in a very specific and more traditional format. My plans now include unmounted and unframed images and hopefully they are to be displayed in multiple ways on products as well as on the walls.
Links to Speculation Gallery
https://www.facebook.com/Speculation-Gallery-201212137335098/
http://www.anthonyokeefeportraits.com/portfolio-item/portrait-workshops/
Sarah Newton Photography 