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Hello friends, as you might have read earlier, I’m hosting a retrospective exhibition of my Gran’s artwork later this month and I thought you might find it interesting to read about the process of organising an exhibition.
To be clear, I’ve only organised two exhibitions previously. They were both a looooooong time ago, and they were both for my photography (yep, I used to do that, and no, I’m not adding a link to it). So, needless to say, I have pretty much forgotten everything I ever knew about putting on exhibitions. And also, I think there’s something really quite different about putting on a retrospective exhibition. Of someone else’s work. Someone you love deeply and who has recently passed.
So, with all that in mind, here’s what I’ve been doing.
First thing was coming up with the idea in the first place. I’ve wanted to hold an exhibition of my Gran’s art for a long time but it’s not been possible for a variety of reasons. I checked with some other close family members as I didn’t want to do something that would hurt feelings or step on toes. We were all really clear that the original artworks would not be for sale, but that we could offer prints with the monies going to an appropriate charity (the Alzheimer’s Society).
Once we’d agreed that my brain went into overdrive. There were so many things buzzing around my head, tasks that my brain was helpfully supplying, things I needed to do for the exhibition. I scribbled them all down in Notion, but I could have easily used a piece of paper or the Notes app on my phone. I wrote it all down partly to make sure I didn’t forget anything, but mostly to give myself peace: all these thoughts and ideas and ‘you need to remember this’ were whizzing around my head whenever I was trying to get to sleep and first thing when I woke up in the morning. Writing them down shut out all that noise.
The first thing I decided to tackle was choosing the pieces to exhibit. This seemed like the first logical step for me because it unlocked everything else – all the production and promotion activities hinged off of what was actually being exhibited.
I wanted to show all the pieces that Gran herself had loved – the ones she had kept, framed, and hung on the walls of her home. Essentially, I let Gran curate the exhibition with her own choices about the pieces she loved the most.
To that, I’ve added some of her works-in-progress that she gave me to help me learn. One of which I actually only discovered a few days ago while looking through her supplies (above). It had been set up as a backing board and I hadn’t turned it around.
I decided to leave these unfinished pieces unframed and set one up with one of her easels and her actual supplies to create a sense of her working; a ‘mise en scene’ if you will.
I also wanted to show some of her work that we don’t have physical examples of anymore – her fabric creations. So I looked through old photographs and found several that feature some of the (many) soft toys that she made. These I’m getting enlarged and mounted for display.
After that, I created the digital files for the exhibition poster that will hang at the gallery, reusing the style for the social media images that were my first bits of advertising. For the imagery, I scanned the ‘hero painting’ (is that a term? Maybe I’ve just made that up – it’s the one painting from an exhibition that’s used for all the advertising) (which, if you’re interested, is ‘Calderglen’). I used my own scanner for that and had to digitally stitch the image together as it was bigger than my scanner. Thankfully, these days Photoshop has a button for that, and I’m happy to report that it works like a treat.
So, having decided what I wanted to include, the next thing I’ve been working on is getting the prints. To make things easier I decided to just get prints of one artwork. It reduces my costs to do this, gives me less inventory to manage, and also makes it easier for exhibition visitors: no decision paralysis. There’s one print – offered as an A4 Giclée art print, or as a greetings card – and that’s it.
Getting the Giclée prints created was an adventure in and of itself. Although my scanner is decent, I decided to ask my local Printers to re-scan it and colour-match the art print to the original. It took quite some time and experimentation on the printer’s part. The colour palette and the subtlety of the work turned out to be exceptionally difficult to reproduce, but they got there in the end.
I decided to re-frame the piece I was getting prints made of. Since it’s featuring in all the advertising and the prints for sale, I thought it could do with a re-frame using art glass (the non-reflective, museum-style glass). The original frame was starting to come apart, and the backing was crumbling, so I figured it was time. But I’m keeping the framing and mounting style as close to the original as possible as I want to show the piece as Gran had it.
Gran didn’t date any of her artwork, give them titles, or leave any notes about how they were made or what they were. This gives me the opportunity – if I want to frame it like that – to be a detective. An art detective. I’m researching each piece that will be on display.
Part of this involves talking with my Dad to get a sense of when they were made. Another aspect of it is me studying the pieces, trying to figure out what materials and techniques she used. A final aspect is trying to determine what the artwork is actually showing. In some cases, this is really easy (it’s a vase of carnations!), others are taking more work. For some of them, I’m trying to track down where a particular landscape is, or what specific pose a ballerina is holding. This is still very much an ongoing task, and something I need to do before I can finish writing the accompanying texts for all the artworks.
I also wanted to have a visitor’s book for people to leave comments in. A quick look online told me there was nothing there that spoke to me. Then I had a brainwave. I have a big stack of paper that Gran had given me. I know how to make books. So I sewed a simple-stitch book together. I used gold embossed lettering on the cover, although I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with that, so might recover it later. If I have time…
Speaking of, the remaining items on my ‘to-do’ list are:
Organising an exhibition like this is a much bigger job than I had realised when I set out. Logically, I know most projects usually are larger than we appreciate at the beginning, but this one caught me by surprise. And the things that come out of the woodwork! I mean, who knew the colour matching for the prints would take a whole day?!?
I’ll share more once the exhibition is up and I can see how it all came together (or not… eeek! Let’s not think about that). For now, I’m in the messy middle and it’s go-go-GO!
Exhibition Blog series:
