Here are some pictures of the joint exhibition Samoobsługa, currently on show in the Rumsey Wells Underbelly until the end of this month. (More can be found on my Flickr page... here).
I'm pretty happy with how this all turned out. There were a few disasters as the collage work refused to stick to the walls, but that was all resolved pretty easily by using PVA instead of wallpaper paste.
After spending a week putting something up (the ripping it all down and putting it up again, twice) it becomes pretty hard to be objective about how successful the finished exhibition is. Plenty of nice feedback from people on the opening night and with a couple of weeks hindsight I'm happy with the overall aesthetic of it.
Moving forward, I'm going to have a change about of my website - I think it looks ok, but no longer reflects the sort of work I'm making - and slim down the amount of work on there. I have had a tendency to show everything in an attempt to appeal to anyone who might come across it, but this has the downside of watering down what I feel could be a tighter portfolio of work. Also, I want to avoid getting any future comissions based on work, or working styles, that I don't really enjoy doing anymore.
Which leads on to a little realisation, which may seem obvious, but only hit home after putting up the Samoobsługa exhibition. That is, I want to focus my energy on making work using processes I enjoy - as opposed to trying to control the finished product too much.
I've shyed away from collage for a while, instead focusing on drawing, but in putting up the installation I realised I enjoy the problem solving involved in collage. Everything placed down becomes something to resolve compositionally and I enjoy the uncertainty and suprise involved in working that way. More of that then.
