Critique Of Katie's Work

HEAD

Another art show in Brighton means another graffiti based show, once again in the prescription gallery this is replacing the previous graffiti based show that was recently on. I find the main problem i encounter with shows in this building is that the building itself very often outshines the work. Head contains mainly wall based graffiti pieces/murals that were good but lacked something that made them great, i can not help but feel that i'd seen it all before, whether these were the same artists i had seen before i was not sure, but nonetheless i think graffiti has its limitations in terms of variety, certainly to a viewer who has a limited knowledge of graffiti.

That said there were a select few pieces that made it interesting, small objects hidden around the space and a selection of drawings and prints on one wall that particularly appealed to me, little of the work stuck in memory.

I am not saying that the show was bad, but i feel like with the amount of graffiti based shows in Brighton that they need to try something different to bring an air of freshness to they're shows, graffiti by its nature is incredibly broad and i can't help but feel that the artists at Head could of done something a little bit different

http://mysterygoogle.com/

show ends

So the show ends on Friday night, someone is coming from the Surrey advertiser to take photographs tomorrow, which could be deemed as strange, what with the show ending tomorrow, but getting your name in a newspaper for art most be a good thing on some level, better than for stealing cars although that might be more financially beneficial. The increasing amount of visits seem to be slowing down so for future reference when putting on a show avoid Sundays and Thursday mornings, and focus on Saturdays.

One thing that this show has led me to think about is the duration of an art exhibition like this one, a week is clearly too long, for the next show i am involved with i would like to try and go for the short approach with alot of specifically invited people for a specific period of time, this show was very different with it being in a good location we have had a fairly steady flow of people coming in off the  street and that has worked on a level but i'd like to compare it to the complete opposite.

It has also been interesting to see what people spend the most time looking at, i presumed putting on a show in Guildford that more traditional art such as realistic painting and drawing would have been the most popular but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way and i'm pleased, what else pleases me is when people clearly want to look at the church but can't see it because we've put big black boards up

sorry if this is a bit of a repetitive post  but it's really boring here

takes a long time to upload

funeral

http://www.theodoraallen.com/index.php

in spire, art exhibition

Tuesday the 10th of November 2009.

The show "in spire" has been open since Saturday morning now which has involved a fair few hours sitting in the cold on my own in this church which has led me to think about a few different things about this exhibition, and exhibitions in general.

For me, a show is an opportunity to show the outside world your art, this may sound obvious but the emphasis is on "show", now at some stage i will probably need to put on a show to sell my work to the outside world, which will probably cause me to change the direction my work goes in, i see it as being highly unlikely that anyone is going to buy a shoddily made wooden ramp, however clever a concept i have behind it, which makes me think, is this the right kind of thing to be making? On the one hand it has been getting a good reaction from people looking around the show, I've had a range of comments but it still seems to be going down better than Andrzej's piece (joke). When it comes down to it, i have to imagine that in future i will be paying at least some money towards putting on a show, I've been lucky enough to get this one for pretty much completely free so i can afford to show a piece of work(s) that are unlikely to bring me any money.

So if i am not going to make any money from this then why am i doing this? To get my work seen? To get my name out there a bit? because i wanted to miss Katie's seminar? Yes i do want to get my work seen, it's useful to see and overhear what people think when, firstly they are not on a art course and not at one of our critiques, and secondly to see whether people spend any time looking at it. So yes it is worth showing the work at this stage, but whether its worth the time and effort of putting on a show for a few reactions is a different question, so to the second point, doing this to get my name out there, this has been something that has been troubling me, so if someone came and saw my work, or anyone's work in this show, and loved it where can they go from there? which makes me think i probably need a website, its all good and fine getting your name out there but if there is no information out there about you no one can do anything with that name.

Saying all that though it does seem that the show has been somewhat successful, i think with something like this you have to try and look at the benefits, over 70 people have come and looked around so far including an Olympic runner, who looked around the show very quickly (not a joke) which i think is a pretty good amount, (especially if you compare it to our end of year show last year), the show itself looks really good and pretty professional, certainly i think we have done the best with the space we have within our limitations and i am starting to see why people are so keen to put art in a white gallery space, it must make life much easier. I also think that this is a pretty useful learning experience, i would like to imagine that the next show i put on or help organize will be better and more successful than this one, and on and on until i am a freaky exhibition god, that or i'll get bored of the process and stop trying, we will have to wait and see.

All in all, so far I'm fairly pleased with the show, I'm learning some useful things and that's got to be good, i can write it on my C.V on hopefully the whole thing will be a useful experience, I've been writing this for 37 minutes and no ones come in yet, it's probably because its cold outside.