Presentation research:
One thing that my tutor has urged me to do is to look for inspiration for presentation of work. I have made a little bit of a start on this but there is much more to look at.
I have tried to keep my eye out locally to look at a variety of presentations. Devon isn’t really abundant with contemporary galleries, so I have had to dig deep. I am due to be visiting a study visit exhibition next month in Bristol and the Photography Feastival in October. I will report back afterwards.
For now though, one place where I went for inspiration was Phoenix Arts Centre. In the bar area was a set of twenty photographs. The images were all abstract representations of the Victorian architecture. All images were in colour but the colours were black and white with hints of creaminess. They were all set in white frames and border and were then hung uniformly in a line around the seating area.
The second place that I managed to find was Brook Gallery, Exeter. This is mostly a fine art and ceramic gallery for collectors of contemporary art. One artist to feature heavily was Mychael Barret. His work caught my eye because he worked in sets of six. One set was ‘Urban Myths’ and the other was ‘Marriage A La Mode’. The presentations were both in grid format set in white mounts. There wasn’t a artists intention noted anywhere but the signfiers were very strong and the body of work took the viewer through different stages of marriage in a humorous but poignant way.
It seems that unless you have the rare opportunity for vast exhibition spaces (such as Tate Modern) with artistic control, then one is limited to restricted and relatively conventional formats for exhibiting.
Even then at Tate Modern and various London exhibitions, on the whole the format for hanging has always been much of a ‘muchness’ with some variation in format to suit a body of work. Only in one corner of a David Bailey exhibition did I ever see anything quite different and that was a very large quantity of portraits of his wife that measured no more than 6×6 inches and was hung in a relatively abstract and homely way. Edwin Smith exhibition was much more intimate but that probably had more to do with restricted floor/wall space than anything else.
Books:
I sat in the Photography corner of Waterstone ‘s bookshop and looked for any sort of contemporary format that appealed to me.
Gabriele Galimberti – Toy Stories.
This appealed, as the use of the page space wasn’t dissimilar to my A2 book. The books was square and each image of a child with their toys was taken with the same compositional formula and placed on the right hand side of the book with only a few words on a otherwise blank page opposite. Those words gave the child’s name and the region. If I recall correctly, there was a prologue to explain the project.
Lieve Blancquart – Birth Day.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/birth-day/lieve-blancquaert/9789401413909
This book is an observation of what childbirth experience is for woman across the planet. The book is a mixture of text and illustrative images. All of the image sizes, layout and compositions of the images altered throughout the book. I guess that the experiences of each woman giving birth is so vastly different across the planet that the photographer has tried to compose the photographs to best convey the experience of any given region and laboring woman.
Jame Ravilious – An English Eye.
I want to spend more time with this book as I head into level 2 landscape. However, the book is split into two distinct sections. The front of the book is text with small images inserted. The rear of the book though is more of a gallery format. One entitled image per page. This format brings the best of both worlds and as the locations are my home, I might find inspiration here as I move forward.
I want to spend more time with this book as I head into level 2 landscape. However, the book is split into two distinct sections. The front of the book is text with small images inserted.
Context and Narrative OCA 