Setting up the exhibition

Today we finally got to set up our exhibition in Kraak Gallery, in the Northern Quarter. It is quite difficult to find, and I was a little disappointed with it when we arrived. The floor hadn't been swept, the walls are curved and marked and there are wires everywhere; from their website I imagined somewhere clean and slick. However, once everyone's work was up the space looked a bit better and the viewers' attention will hopefully be on our work, not the state of the gallery.

We had asked for a large area of wall space in a corner but received a flat wall that wasn't quite big enough. With a mixed exhibit trying to accommodate so many different requirements this was to be expected though, and although it meant having to compromise a little to fit everything in, the end results still looked good. I tried a couple placements out using blu-tac before settling on a final composition. 

Safia, Sue and I helped each other put up work, but it would have been easier with Ollie and Jacob there. As students submitting films were told they could leave, Jacob was free to go, and Ollie told us that he would be putting up his work on Thursday morning. We hadn't seen either of them in a while, and had only met Ollie twice, so were unsure how much space to leave for his work. This initially held us up, however by trying things out we realised that there was only one arrangement that would accomodate Safia and I's work well, and so used that.

Initial presentation

Final position for large photographs, fixed with sticky dots and tacks

Fortunately a plinth was available to display my photo books and origami pieces. I also made a concertina card containing smaller versions of the large photographs on the wall. I felt that although Hannah's idea of a drawn book sounded intriguing, from my perspective the purpose of the project was to document the origami and bring out the character of  Manchester School of Art's buildings and the playful nature of the origami pieces themselves. As a result, one book focusses on the 'journey' of the boxes from folded templates to little colonies of boxes before becoming an advancing population on top of a table, with the Holden Gallery as a back-drop. The other book shows the boxes arranged in compositions demonstrating their scale, and in front of the patterned surfaces that influenced my hand-made papers.

In the photo above, I was happy with the positions of the large photographs, but the pieces on the plinth didn't quite feel right. Once I had cut the concertina card in half and re-arranged things, the arrangement was mostly symmetrical, felt more open and flowed better. It was important to include the origami boxes in order to show their true scale next to the large, scale-distorting photographs. It seemed appropriate to organise them by colour, and stack them as they had been in my earlier photographs.

Concertina cards in the centre, origami pieces and books on either side