John Downton award set up
On Thursday the 20th of October 2016, myself and a fellow colleague from the fine art department went to Maidstone, to help curate and hang the Downton award at the council building near the Maidstone east train station. Upon arriving at the council building we were welcomed by the reception area, after fighting out way through a teacher’s union protest just outside the door. We were provided with visitor’s passes and directed toward where the exhibition would be hung. As we stepped through the door we noticed all of the work dotted around along the walls and on tables stretching the entire length of the long side corridor that we momentarily realised lead into a larger hall with yet more work to curate. Our colleagues had visited the day before and helped the main curator, Dan Bass, make a start to the show. Dan wasn’t there when we arrived so we decided to take a look around and familiarise ourselves with the work that we would be hanging. The standard of the work was quite high and in terms of technical ability, really rather surprised us as we were told this was a student award of children under the age of eighteen. Little did we know that some of the work we had regarded higher actually came from the fourteen and below category.
When Dan arrived we introduced ourselves and briefly recapped what had happened the day before, quickly we learnt that our colleagues had been involved with the unpacking of the work from its tailored delivery containers, to then do quality checks and ensure all the work had arrived. This then led them to an initial talk and placement of some of the work, giving them a better idea of where things should go. Judging by the amount of work already up on the walls this was a great success and they achieved a great amount leading into the day we were about to have.
Initially Dan asked myself and my colleague to start in the larger room, making decisions on the placement of the work and working through the ins and outs of what went well with what. This was highly enjoyable and after a short period of consideration we made great headway, working around the previous days work and quickly assigning a lot of work to its final areas. At this point we realised that there was a lot of work to hang and quickly diminishing amounts of room to hang it in. we took this issue to Dan who quickly decided that we would need to pull certain pieces into the first of the two rooms, to allow for more room. This consideration was made with the knowledge that there would have to be a clean divide between age groups and that we would need to rethink some of the room at the front.
After long thought about a lot of decisions about different work my colleague, Dan and I had come to agreement on nearly all of the work. One decision that I made and stood by was having regular placement of the necessary salon hang areas to ensure rhythms all along the sides of the room, to make sure the viewers eyes were drawn along the room rather than to any one point in the room. This was extremely satisfying for me as it was met with instant agreement and thoughts from Dan, telling me I should consider curation as I appeared to have a knack for it.
One of my main responsibilities of the day was to attach mirror plates to the backs of all of the frames without them. At this point we learnt the importance of this from an organisation point of view. The artists were asked to provide and fit their own plates, this was quite obviously ignored or forgotten by the participants as I had a lot of work to do. This is something that we took note of and will take forward into our professional lives, the need for high level of vigilance and an ability to problem solve and think on your feet.
After a long day of talking, thinking and decision making we decided to call it a day. With only a few pieces left to hang in the front room as well as a completed back room, we struggled together through the far left side, making decision after decision on what would be the most complex area of the exhibition so far. After this we walked around looking through the decisions we had made overall and helped Dan figure out the final placement of the rest of the work for him to come in the day after and finish off. We all exchanged details and we thanked Dan for the experience to which he replied thanks for all of our help.
