Solent Showcase Exhibition
This week’s been a hectic one, finishing off all the loose ends that need to get done to make an exhibition work and finally getting the work onto the walls.
It was quite emotional to see pieces together as a body of work and not only in isolation. Some of the sketchbooks and developmental pieces were produced up to four or years ago when I first started this body of work with the support of research funding from Southampton Solent University to investigate the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
As well as exhibiting final artworks on the walls, I thought it was important to show the variety of processes (drawings, paintings and printmaking) that I bring together digitally to make the final works.
I hope this will give visitors to the exhibition an insight into my working process and inspire them to get out drawing, printmaking and painting.
On the left side of the cabinet there are some of the tools and media used to produce location
drawings,including sticks, feathers, grasses and seed pods. On the right side are tools of the trade for letterpress, there is monotype surrounded by furniture, quoins and a chase all ready to print on a letter-press machine. There’s also a roller, some ink rolled out and a tin of ink a palette knife.
At the front of the gallery is an Artists Book which contains six of the prints with accompanying poems, there are also some greetings cards and prints for sale.
There is a corner of the gallery where visitors can respond to the themes within the exhibition in sketchbooks. These will be exhibited at the end of the exhibition along with work produced in workshops with educational and outreach groups.
I couldn’t have done it without the help of the creative powerhouse that work within Solent University and the Solent Showcase Gallery especially curator Kate Maple, Josef Hill and Andreea Stan, designer Brian Reed, photographer Simon Griggs and book-binder and printmaker Katherine Anteney.