Life in Colour - Nunns Yard - 23rd/24th March 2019

Saskia asked me at the beginning of the unit whether I would be interested in her exhibition that she was curating at Nunns Yard in Norwich - which would include work responding to colour. She was interested in having my work in the show because of its relation to festivals, circus and colourful shapes and forms. She was up for showing work I had already created, but I knew that to keep my work pushing forward I wanted to make something new.

I was so happy with the way the yellow piece turned out for the 'Wall to Wall' exhibition that I decided to use it for Life in Colour. As I have already played around with displaying it and documenting it in different ways I knew I needed to use this exhibition as a test for the degree show. As I did not have much input into the curation of the show - that was all Saskia - I knew I just needed to focus on different ways of displaying. I couldn't hang anything in Nunns Yard because it is a listed building, so the initial plan was to make a stand to go inside the spectacle to hold it up and hold its shape. Between San Francisco, 'What you on?', and my job commitments I had less time than I thought to make the stand for the 'Domesticated Spectacle', so the idea to use my hat stand was a spontaneous decision. In the end it actually worked well having the hat stand as a way of hanging the work, as it added to the domestic qualities of the piece. Hat stands are used for clothing and people know that you take things off a hat stand to wear them in an everyday environment. This means that the expectation that the spectacle is a wearable piece is there for the audience, which was important to me. However, because the hat stand is on show, it makes the piece more sculptural, so the invitation to wear the piece is questioned, as the audience are not sure whether they are allowed to move it or not. Ultimately, the wearing of the piece by the audience is not as important to me at this stage in my practice because I am focusing on the spectacles themselves, so I was not thinking about whether or not I should have put more effort into advising the audience that the piece was indeed wearable. 

When installing, I had brought along the initial drawing for the spectacle that I did in response to the painting in 'Wall to Wall', as well as the final image of my work in front of the original painting in hope that I could display them alongside the spectacle to show the development of the piece. As I had to go to work (the timing of the exhibition really clashed with my work commitments), I asked Saskia to make a decision about whether or not it worked to show them alongside my piece. As curator, I knew that she gets the final say in what is shown. In the end the images were not shown alongside the spectacle, as I think that was the right decision, as it meant that the spectacle became more ambiguous as to its purpose and function as an artwork. 

My piece was shown next to a large silver foil sculpture on the back wall, and I really liked the contrast between the colours and textures. Because of the colour, the whole exhibition was playful and fun, which meant that the playful element to my spectacle was enhanced. Even though my work is made with a festival context in mind and I do not ever picture it within a gallery setting, I know that it will be for the degree show, and this exhibition has been valuable in knowing how I want to display my spectacles. I know I want to make 3 spectacles, and I think if they are just standing alone like the 'Domesticated Spectacle' was in this show, but in a group, it will look good, but I think I want to get the festival context to show through.