Opening of the Exhibition

The opening of the exhibition went really well, a lot of people came and the feedback seemed to be good. One of the issues that a few of the people that I chatted to was the lack of explanation or title next to the pieces. This was a major problem that seemed to have been completely overlooked by the curators, even after we submitted an artist's statement and a title for our pieces. Ideally I would have liked to have my artist's statement displayed next to my piece, or at least my title 'Carcinoma Series' - just to hint at the idea behind the work. Or the statements could have been printed up in a small leaflets easily, similar to the ones handed out at the opening, if people did not want text next to their pieces. The fact that there was no explanation with the works meant that a lot of the ideas were lost and the audience was left confused by some of the pieces - basing whether they liked the pieces on purely aesthetics.

The idea behind my final pieces was to take something horrible, in this case brain cancer, and make it seem beautiful and for people to admire it. The fact that the drawings were cancer was significant to create some intrigue into the pieces, however without the title displayed the fact that these weren't just healthy MRI scans was lost.

One successful part of the pieces I presented was the engagement with the audience. I forced people to get close to my pieces, wanting to break the invisible barrier often found in the gallery space between the viewer and art. I wanted to get the viewer to get as close as possible, so using a magnifying glass and removing the glass from the frames I encouraged them to do this. I had also been looking at how other tiny pieces of art had been displayed and really liked the way that Adele Lack had presented her 'Small Miracles' micropaintings. Initially I had the magnifying glass mounted onto the wall using pins, however this made the glass look like it was part of the piece and I was afraid this would deter the audience from using it. This is why I decided to use a small white shelf attached to the wall below the frames to sit the magnifying glass on. This was really effective, and whilst observing the viewers interacting with my work I noticed that almost everyone picked up the magnifying glass straight away. One problem that I hadn't considered was the fact that the wall behind was made of plasterboard, so was not thick enough to hold the screws into the wall, and therefore the screws were not solid enough to hold the shelf straight. This meant that at the opening the shelf was wobbly and was slipping forward off the supports. The Friday after the opening I had to go into the space and try and figure out how to attach my shelf more effectively, the major problem being that I couldn't use brackets because of the plaster board. In the end I used a very strong adhesive to join the back of the shelf to the wall, and then painting over any places where the glue was visible.