Layout

I have realy been struggling to visualise how I want the final work to appear in a gallery space. I’m not entirely convinced that this kind of project really belongs in a gallery on such a small scale. I have so much content that I could even have a solo exhibition. I was considering making it as authentic as the archive. Making a replica set of shelves or desk to present the work on, perhaps. But then I thought that it is a kind of fraud, a lie. I don’t want the viewer to feel as though I have brought the archive to them, but to hold what I show them at arms length. If my work is to spark interest, leaving the viewer to want more, I can’t give them everything on a plate, it’s just not good sense!

With wanting a physical book and prints from the archive to be presented double sided, I had to decide on how I would like my work to work together in an exhibition. Already I have touched upon how I feel a gallery is not the most appropriate means of sharing this work, but I want to adapt the work so that can work in this situation. Because over the past several months I have gained a lot of audio content as well as photographs I wanted to include some of Jinx’s speech so that the project would have a voice within the gallery space.

From my previous decision to have double sided picture frames to be mounted on the wall at right angles I feel that I would like to have a corner space so that these picture frames would mark the edge of the work. Otherwise, I feel it would look very odd. With two small 28x28cm frames and a book sat on a plinth the wall space I would be taking up would look extremely bare; I first thought about having two large prints one A1 and the other A2 of an interior shot of the archive and a portrait of Jinx. However, I have decided that a portrait of Jinx would muddle what the work stood for: the archive.

This is the first (extremely rough) look at how the piece of work should look, with the central line being the corner of the gallery.

(update 30th May)

Considering the works that were to be placed next to mine, I decided that I should have the prints from the archive on the main back wall with the front facing out. This meant that once a viewer was within the area of my work, they could see the back of the prints to see that they are from the archive itself. I thought that this was important. I also decided that the audio pieces should be on separate walls so that it wasn’t confusing for the viewer to discover that they were separate pieces of audio.

I am so pleased that my work was in a corner as this meant that there was a space which my viewer could be cubbied in, so that they could be surrounded almost by the world I was in when working in the archive too. This image doesn’t show the book itself as it was still in its box. Having a small space to experience my work is my way of making it immersive; taking inspiration from Tim Hetherington’s Sleeping Soldiers Exhibition which had several large projections surrounding the viewer, I wanted my viewer to also be surrounded in a slightly different way.