Exhibition day is here

The time has come for me to tell you all about the exhibition which all my work has been for. All the young artists went down to Wysing on thursday evening to curate our exhibition, the space was truly brilliant. After spending a while planning where everyones work would go we got to work. Unfortunately, after planning where everyone's work would go there was very little time left for me to put my pieces up so I left instructions for Kirsten to finish my installation on the following day.

The exhibition was on over the weekend from 12 till 5pm.  The young artists had arranged a drinks reception for family and friends at midday to open the exhibition. We all really enjoyed the formality of this occasion and the fact that it signalled the start of exhibiting all our hard work.

Everything went well over the whole weekend, people loved all the pieces. A total of nine artists exhibited work in the exhibition, every one of which was truly brilliant. Some of the photos of my pieces are displayed below.

My four seasons piece 

My felted piece inspired by art in the grounds of wysing

My beach huts

Fish

Textile tree

All in all the exhibition went well and my three arts award pieces were taken to another exhibition in Cambridge. Its called Celebrate South Cambridgeshire Arts Awards. However, even though the exhibition went well, the setting up process didn't. As I mentioned earlier, I had left instructions for how to finish my installation as I couldn't make it on Friday night. When I arrived on Saturday morning, an hour before the launch as requested, I was shocked to find that none of my pieces had been put up. The reason for this was that the curators had wanted to change the way the installation was being displayed, and show the pieces off differently to how I had requested.  This left me very little time to make a decision and actually install my work.  I would have liked to try displaying it both their way and mine, but did not have the time.  Unfortunately they also wanted me to add an extra piece to the final exhibition, which was in fact one of the gold arts pieces.  I was already upset about how much time I had to get the piece up, so this was really the final straw, and I stuck to my guns, saying the piece they wanted to include, was NOT part of the final exhibition piece, and indeed did not fit in.  It was a bit of a battle, but on this point they conceded.  The experience made me feel - I don't know any other word to use, than bullied.  I think, and hope, I am stronger because of this experience, but unimpressed with how it was handled on their part.

Needless to say, the final exhibition pieces were in place as they wanted, at the end of the hour, but I was left with no choice in how it was done.  Do I think it was better their way - probably yes.  Having no choice in looking at both ways - not good.
Thats all for now 

Meghan