Bristol Post Diverts
Chequered History @ Edwardian Cloakroom, Bristol
November 2015
A spontaneous suggestion of a toilet block being available free of charge for us to exhibit in, this could be treated as a practice run for our booked exhibition in March 2016. It seemed like a good idea at the time but in hindsight I think the preparation and organising distracted us from what we should have been concentrating on, which was developing our art practice. If I was offered this opportunity again I would graciously decline so I could focus on my studio work. However having put this down to experience we did have numerous positives that came out of it. Due to our marketing we had over 350 visitors over 4 days, most were walk ins, passers by who noticed our exhibition sign. The cloakroom itself was an interesting and quirky space and we agreed to make our work site specific. I chose to blackout a room - the learning I take away from this is that it was incredibly difficult and took me ages to do - if I chose to do this again I would research how best to make it look professional ( it did look rather amateurish with tape everywhere) maybe theatre blackout curtains - anyway more thought required and perhaps I will look for a gallery that has a blacked out room already! The lighting source I used was also rather basic and almost caught on fire at one point - I believe I managed to probably 50% succeed in creating the coloured impact in the room there was a lot that could have been improved - it did look pretty amateurish!
On reflection the exhibition wasn't curated as a group even though we convinced ourselves it was. Everyone really did their own thing and we just helped each other set up. We also didn't actively seek feedback from each other or hold a critique of our work before or after the exhibition - I think we missed a trick there as we could potentially have improved the exhibition - I believe we were all rather caught up in just making it happen. The exhibition space was interesting and quirky which I did love but I didn't like the fact it was divided into 2 very separate spaces (men and women toilets) this I believe interrupted the flow for the viewers and on the women side had several spots that became bottlenecks. 
Key learnings to take to Centrespace would be to sort out the curation and make sure we appoint people to take that role and apply some rigor. Even though we did target and focus heavily on the media for marketing we could do more next time and we know where to target now. The private view we need to invite a wider audience such as gallery owners, university courses, arthouse directors, press etc just a little more thought required. We also collectively agreed that we should appoint specific people to specific roles to avoid the same few people in the group ending up doing much of the work.
In all a successful exhibition in that we had a lot of visitors and we learnt a lot - recommendation to next years 2nd years don't put on 2 shows!
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