Professional Practices - Opening Night and Final Blog

 Greetings Humans

Today is 17th of November 2020

Opening Night of Connections Art Exhibition, I don't know what to say about this but I'm highly disappointed in this exhibition. What I was expecting was people with multiple artworks and possibly large artworks, not small and minimal artworks. Yes, you could probably say that's a bit of high hopes coming from a beginning artists, but so, we got given an area that isn't too huge to fill, easily. You would also say that I'm critiquing the others too harshly as the biggest piece of artwork there was, my little display of D&D (Dungeon and Dragons) World, which to be honest, yes, I am critiquing the others too harshly (also myself as I didn't take the rungs of creating this exhibition).

This duration of putting this exhibition on, I felt like others were lazing this paper behind. I will give credit were credit is due though.

The Design team did do well with designing the imagine of the exhibition with the posters and broachers, but yet, I understand this was later on when realizing when putting the pieces all together, we didn't have large labels of names, also "Don't Touch" signs (which I created and printed off). Lastly, the artist statements were all different fonts, layouts and font sizes, which I would prefer all artist statements the same layout, font type and size. 

The Catering, did alright, the food was interesting, but there was no napkins and even through the food was visually pleasing, the red onion was a bit over powering. I do question how much it fully cost for the food, cause I don't see where the $100 went. 

 

Installation team, I don't know where their heads were. Unsure where to put thing, not even an idea where to put things. Probably also, not start printing off things like half a week before time, to see the sizing and amount of artworks people have for the exhibition. Not even just artworks but see if the artist statements are all the same font size, font type and layout. On top of that, I felt like they should have also sorted out folder in the Y drive, in the NZCC folder, a folder for the exhibition for people to any of there work needed to be printed, folder for films and animation and a folder for the Artist Statements (which on a side note, I did that yesterday as no one was going to do it).

Media team, that was my team, thing is, I don't think there was a team, it was just me it felt. Putting that aside, I would admit I would have done better, like maybe asking the radio to say something and probably ask the Design team for some A4 sized posters as most places I went to don't put up posters that are bigger than A4.

But most of all as Chairman, (forgive my language) I should have dragged people's arses through the mud to get this done. I believed as Chairman I have disappointed this exhibition cause I didn't do that. I thought too hard on my other papers and my own display that I didn't think of the exhibition as a whole. I was too wrapped up on when Argus, he message me on behalf of the Installation team stating that they don't have the time or resources to get the things I needed for my display. So angry with that statement because, that was not honesty, that was pure laziness, as I knew I could get the resources with the "limited" amount of time we had.

But hey, look at it now, as my invited guest and I was waiting for people to look around, we saw a few people more interested and invested in my little display than the other works. I admit it was a little too much compared the rest of the exhibition, but that's only cause I thought about it.

 

I wanted an area where people that walks in can come in and enjoy the atmosphere of a D&D world. Unfortunately the my prints didn't want to stick to the wall, causing them to peel off. I will be reprinting them again tomorrow, but on normal paper and pinned to the wall.

If I turned back time, what would I've done?

If I had to redesign the layout of the other part of the exhibition, I would have put the projector of the opposite side/wall of the kitchen and also probably got people to put up other works during this 6 months of study, as one or two artwork can't show 6 months of work. I'll put their major artwork(s) that they are proud of, larger around A2 or A1 depending of amount of artworks they are proud with and have their other works around A4 size. With the layout of artworks, would have layout it like the same way I did with my artworks.

Major artworks in the middle and little artworks around the sides of the major artwork(s). I would probably suggest the next class of Certificate of Creativity to do this, show all the works down, making the major/favourite artworks larger and minor smaller, just to fill the areas.

If others would be reading this, they might commented what about the fact I'm only happy with one type of art form, ie lets say, Film. Why not, show the script, show some equipment/objects of the filming, maybe some costumes. If Animation, 360 pictures of the character, background drawings, animatic script, etc. Basically the project in creation. Also, if there is multiple people with this, maybe multiple tv showing the process from animatic to animation. I understand this means a lot more work but it'll amazing and more impactful for the exhibition, other than what is shown now.

Audience Thoughts

I invited my partner and flat-mate/best friend to the opening night, we had to leave early as my bestfriend started to get back pain, I've asked them about their opinions on the night and here they are.

Partner (Will Kelland):

"Having taken part in preparing and organizing Kynn's display earlier in the day I was disappointed in the set up when I returned. All the pieces the other students had submitted  being lined up along one wall gave  little in the way of  separating and highlighting each student and the work they put in."

Best Friend (Rose Park):

"My thoughts are that most of the people didn't care enough to put hard work into this display, it makes a statement that they do not want to work hard in life or in the work place. It was sad to see that most of the space was wasted and no effort to make it work with creativity. There was food but the bare minimal and drinks but it look like there was no effort made to make it feel more comfortable."

Final Thoughts

So there you have it, I understand that it seems biased that this is coming from two people I invited but yeah. Sorry I'm way too upset with this event and too embarrassed to state the fact that I'm part of it. So for next time: (Probably need to print this out for next year me)

• Write down all the things that might be extra to design and print out, i.e., banners, titles, artist statement and other instructions (i.e. Don't Touch and No Photos please). Make sure the design is consistence.
• Prepare the folders for print and show case items for exhibitions weeks before exhibition, make sure whatever is shown is at right size and amount before sending to printing. If needing a change better to have sometime allowing to reprint if necessary.
• Make sure there is extra stuff for the exhibition as more is better and you can just leave things out, if there is too much. It was difficult to fill an area with nothing.
• Any Movies or Animation or anything that requires editing to put on a tv or projector, prepare the reel a week before for rendering and if any glitches/hiccups in the reel we can fix it before hand. 
• Also don't get the tutor to do make reels or fix up printings, it's our exhibition, not theirs. We should've learned how to do that during our time as professional practices.
• Design a rough idea out of layout before installing, you can improvise later with complete layout. 
• Posters, have two types of size as many places don't allow posters bigger than A4.
• Finally more for myself, take charge if people muck around, don't let them muck you around. This is/was a class exercise and it didn't help that I didn't take charge when people weren't communicating. More probably give a hand when people are stuck or something, I'm not saying all people are like this but, if there is an easier way out of stuff, people would take it, and people that are close with me wouldn't like it if I over worked and took the whole project under my wing.

What went well:

• There was something shown in the exhibition.
• Also 35 people come to the exhibition, so a good handful of people. Even though, there is about 56,000 people in Invercargill (google statistics), so either its we didn't do well in advertising or we didn't get good word of mouth in the community.