This was such a useful experience. We had searched high and low for an affordable space for our exhibition, and one of our members used his contacts in the commercial property industry to secure a vacant space in a bustling shopping centre on the outskirts of coastal town Eastbourne. Opposite a large supermarket, the space featured strip lights and garish wallpaper, but lots of room for our print sculptures.
On the whole, it was a success. I exhibited one piece from the February exhibition, ‘Wear Shirt?’ hung in a different way – like a canopy rather than vertical. And a new piece, ‘Behind the Curtain’ featured four screenprinted and appliqued net curtains, with words and images in mainly pink and white. I loved how my pieces interacted with others in the space – especially the black and white drawings behind. And children found the curtains really fun – they ran through and underneath them, and I think its important to make art which is resilient to be played with and touched.
A key learning here was that I would have liked to hang this piece differently. It is large in scale, with each curtain around 3m, and the straight dowels used made them seem a little flat, and the overlaps – where I think things got most visually interesting – didnt happen as much as I would have liked. Next time I would like to make a bended rod or pole of some sort, so that the curtains are hung along a zig-zag and that way each curtain could be hung closer to each other. I would also like more directed lighting, which wasn’t possible with this venue.
We were really grateful to the people at Langney, and the charity HoldingSpace, who supported us, and we in turn raised over £100 for HoldingSpace with our drop-in print workshop on one of the days of the exhibition. All in all, it was definitely something we will do again.
hannahbailey.org 