Target Practice Exhibition Videos

During the run of the exhibition I made a number of videos to explain my thinking behind a number of my images and to also add a bit of background information from my research. The vids were also a good way for viewers not attending the physical gallery space to see the exhibition and hear my thoughts on the subject matter. By making a permanent record they also help to extend the longevity of the project once the physical exhibition closed.

Vid 1:


Target Practice Exhibition Vid 1 from ammoniteM on Vimeo.



Vid 2:

Target Practice Exhibition Vid 2 from ammoniteM on Vimeo.




Vid 3:


Target Practice Exhibition Vid 3 from ammoniteM on Vimeo.




Vid 4:


Target Practice Exhibition Vid 4 from ammoniteM on Vimeo.

Assignment 5

This assignment requires a 2,000 word essay on the output of a piece of work (usually the body of work from the previous module). My Target Practice project is the obvious choice as I have been building up to putting on an exhibition from the start. My essay detailed all the preparation and planning for the exhibition and the final outcome.

The exhibition photos can be seen here:

Target Practice exhibition

With this essay written I feel that there just a few more pieces of work to complete and then I will be done. I skipped assignment three (the internship/case study) which is another essay. I hope to have this complete by the end of July so I can concentrate on assessment for November.

It feels quite strange to be nearing the end of the degree pathway after all these years. At the same time it will be good to move on and pursue other interests. I am looking at incorporating new elements into my photography and will probably begin with some painting or drawing. I have never fully explored drawing on, painting and cutting photographs so that may be a good place to start. I have always been interested in making pieces too so some kind of sculptural/installation activity may be on the cards in the near future.

Lots to think about and look forward to. I just need a last push now to clear up all the bits and pieces.

Self Promotion - The Results

As part of my self-promotion I had write a press release. I sent it to the Pie Factory gallery manager who used it to promote my work to local newspapers - both print and online. I also sent out my own copies to any LGBTQ related organisations that might be interested. It was picked up by Margate Pride who also shared it to their online followers. Art Rabbit is an online site that takes exhibition listings and also Source online was requesting degree graduates to show their work.

Art Rabbit Exhibition Listing

Of these so far I've been contact by a journalist who wanted to feature Target Practice in the Dover Express and Thanet Gazette as part of their community news. This was great news and I provided them with high quality images for their print media.

The Dover Express article can be seen here:

Dover Express Community Listing

I think the feature spans out really well against all the community listings. Iy is very striking and bound to catch the viewer's attention.

Target Practice exhibition has also been picked up and shared online by Margate Pride, The Margate Mercury and a few other online sites. Here are some of the posts:

Margate Pride Facebook Page

Margate Mercury Facebook Page

Margate Pride Instagram Page

Hopefully the result of all this promotion will result in increased awareness and footfall for the show. Once the hang is complete I plan to deliver a few flyers to locations such as the local tourist information, galleries and coffee shops. 

Kickstarter Updates

To keep my Kickstarter donators invested in my project I thought it a good idea to push out regular updates. I like to follow an artist's work in progress myself to see how they develop ideas and resolve problems and I am sure that many others feel the same way. I decided to commit to a weekly update on the project that published to my Kickstarter page and automatically emailed existing donators. I also publicised the updates to my social media accounts so that potential new donators who were interested could follow the link to my Kickstarter project page. I found that updates are a useful tool for generating new donators. Every time I published an update a few new donators would join the project.

The project has been a big success and has met my goal of raising £500 to cover my printing costs. With 18 days to go the project has raised 107% of the funding requested.


The updates are listed below:

  

Keeping A Promotional Campaign Fresh

Thinking up new ways to continue to engage with an audience as an artist is very time consuming. There are lots of strategies to think about and new skills to learn. This all takes time. But this time is necessary as making art that has no audience seems ultimately fruitless and frustrating.

So far I've used a number of strategies to promote awareness of my exhibition. Firstly I began by make updates on social media about my progress towards the exhibition. This involved images of my work in progress on individual pieces, making bases for props and the acquiring of items such as plinth bases. I feel that showing how an artist puts an exhibition together would be of interest to the viewer and also help to build and sustain interest throughout the campaign.

 Making a base for a prop

Plinth bases for props

Another line of promotion I am about to utilise is to link my exhibition with various events and things to do in Margate. I propose to post to social media a different aspect of Margate every week. There is a lot of choice in this seaside town such as the newly refurbished Dreamland amusement park, the old town quarter, Margate Pride, the Turner Contemporary, the beach and the harbour arm cafes and bars. I learned how to make GIFs with Photoshop. The steps are fairly simple and there is a number of videos online explaining the process. As with anything the time comes in designing a GIF that looks appropriate and getting the feel of it right. Here is my first effort that I pushed out to social media yesterday:

BE BY THE SEASIDE (Dreamland) promotional GIF

Once I was satisfied with my newly created GIF I attempted to push it out to social media. I soon realised that although Facebook and Twitter were fine, Instagram did not support GIFs! After all my efforts that was really frustrating! I investigated and found a third-party app that purported to have a work-around but it corrupted my GIF. Eventually I had a brainwave and realised that Photoshop could export my GIF files to a small movie format that Instagram would support. This blog also has trouble displaying one of the images correctly but it works fine on all my other SM formats now.

When designing my GIF I tried to keep it basic and used the strapline "BE BY THE SEASIDE" which I will use for the other GIFS too. The intention is to raise awareness of other activities that could be done by a visitor that may be considering travelling to Margate for my exhibition. As with all marketing attempts it remains to be seen how effective this strategy will be. This is the conundrum. How much time do you spend learning new skills and putting together new campaigns against all the other numerous tasks that need to be completed for the exhibition deadline!

BE BY THE SEASIDE (Turner Contemporary) promotional GIF

BE BY THE SEASIDE (Harbour Arm) promotional GIF

BE BY THE SEASIDE (Shell Grotto) promotional GIF

I need to continue to promote my Kickstarter campaign by providing updates on my progress. I have just finished a new collage piece 'collage 3' and will write about that. One idea I've had to get more engagement is to ask for suggestions for a title for it. All the Target Practice photographs are numbered 1 -- 11. The three new collages will have names. It will be interesting to make a Kickstarter post about naming one of the collages and see what (if any) feedback this generates.

Collage 3

Spray Mounting Test No. 2

Yesterday I spray mounted my second test piece. This was at the larger size of 40x30 inches. It went fairly well apart from an initial panic about bubbling. Luckily I could re-lift the print and squeeze out the unwanted air pockets without too much trouble. I have to be really careful as there is a trade-off between thoroughly rubbing the surface to remove air and damaging the print surface. I've been using some acid free paper and a sponge type thing I borrowed from Gerry's art supplies. It seems to work quite well.

I am much happier with this print. The first one came out too dark. This is much closer to my smaller assessment pieces. Cutting the foam board wasn't too difficult either. I learnt a few tips along the way that will make the process much easier when I batch order the rest of the prints next month.

Kickstarter

I've updated and finalised my Kickstarter page today. I have asked for £500 towards printing costs for my exhibition. As a reward contributors will be offered one or two digital prints dependant on level of contribution. The project is currently with Kickstarter admin to assess that it fits their fundraising rules which should take a few days. Once it has passed I can begin to promote my project on social media.

Edit 24th April:

My Kickstarter page is launched! I had to make a few amendments to ensure that URL's to all my social media are embedded into all my sites. Now visitors should be able to navigate between my Kickstarter page and my personal website or Instagram. I was quite excited to launch my page. I already have some very generous donations via the Kickstarter site and my personal Facebook page. I just need to advertise my campaign more widely now, something I will be doing over the next few days.

my Kickstarter campaign

I began publicising my exhibition online today. I began with posting my flyer to my Facebook account and other small FB groups that I belong to. Most of these contacts are fellow OCA students and FB friends. The post has been shared a number of times already so it is good to know that the publicity for my exhibition will begin to spread further than my own small circle. I've also used WhatsApp to send the flyer to friends that are not necessarily on FB but inevitably some people will come into contact with my flyer through a number of channels.

I also posted on the OCA discussion forum's coffee shop and photography sections. That is it for today. Tomorrow I will use MailChimp to mass email my flyer to my contact database. I began this list early on in the SYP module as directed and it is surprising how quickly it grows if you keep on top of it. The database will allow me to personally invite art contacts that may wish to be informed of my work and the dates. Once that is done the next task is to use Instagram and Twitter to broadcast to a wider audience.

The plan is to publicise the exhibition twice. One for people to put the date in their diaries and another much nearer the opening as a reminder.

Two New Pieces

Two of the three new pieces designed for the gallery space are now finished. Like the Target Practice photographs I'm mounting them onto foam board so the gallery presentation is cohesive. Twenty sheets of A0 foam board is quite expensive! But nothing compared to the cost of framing.

The first piece I made involving the pink triangles with the bullet holes is now complete. I initially experimented with a textured surface on which to place the triangles. This resulted in the bowing of the foam board. I tried a few variations of textured paint/paste but ultimately the foam board does not appear suitable to much manipulation. It is so easily damaged.

Target Practice No.2 (working title).

I am satisfied with the overall result and once in the gallery space I think it will add a much needed splash of colour to the mostly green and brown landscape pieces. It also gives the viewer the opportunity to see some of the triangles close-up.



The second piece of collaged triangles was made to resemble a portrait of Josef Kohout. From the one available photograph I began experimenting with folding and manoeuvring the image to bring out the different facial characteristics in Josef's portrait.

Josef Kohout

Paper folding experiment No. 4

I based the triangles in this piece on the convention of the portrait format. I toyed with the idea of placing a picture frame around the finished piece to further highlight this but decided it would look contrived. I prefer the simplicity of the shapes and the piece better fits with the rest of the exhibition on foam board and without frames.

Josef Kohout (working title).

I have just one more piece to make. I still have the mounting of the prints to do once I've ordered them from my online printer. Some plinth bases to make, A base for one of the large props and signage. Still lots to do!

Designing an Exhibition Handout

Unlike the fancy Christmas card design handout that I made for assessment of my BoW, my exhibition handout will be much simpler. This is because of the potential issue of having to make many copies for gallery viewers and the time involved in making them. I settled on a piece of landscape format A4 folded in half. To mitigate this familiar shape I will be cutting off a strip to make the folded paper feel smaller in the hand - more like a small card. The relay-text for the Target Practice images is printed in order on all sides including the front. This is purely to fit it all on and allow enough space not to crowd the text.

I had experimented with some different style of folds that would not be too time consuming to put together but this one feels like the best fit. The problem with my two earlier designs below was once the paper was unfolded the big block of text seemed off-putting to me. I probably wouldn't want to plow through it either.

This third experimental handout was folded smaller and the texts were discovered as each section was unfolded. Too fiddly and ultimately when completely unfolded the block of text issue was still there.

Finally, by using a landscape format the blocks of text looked a lot less chunky and crowded on the page. I may want to add more detail once I've had a chance to think about the handout for a few days but at least my main texts are all laid out.

Gallery Layout & Making New Pieces

After making the maquette for the Pie Factory Gallery I had a play around with layouts using little pink post-it notes cut to size. After several experiments I think I've arrived at a layout that is close to how I envisaged. By exploring the maquette I made a mental note of odd-shaped areas to check when I re-visited the space. There was also the question of the mysterious fourth room. I wasn't sure I'd be using this room and needed to have another look.

When I arrived at the gallery space I was rather surprised that the online plan did not exactly match reality. A door to the toilets was not shown and this impacted on the available wall space in room two. Room four appeared larger than I remember it and I'm wondering if some changes have been made to improve the gallery space that have not been updated on the plan. There was an exhibition in progress and looking at the size of the pictures I was able to gauge the hanging space a lot better. It was a bit of shock to realise that my A1 size photographs were going to look too small! I need to go bigger! And make more work to fill the four rooms available!


Having an overnight think I decided that I need to introduce some of the props from the woodland shoots into the exhibition. I have already been encouraged to do this by the Level 3 student hangout group this week, so the decision is timely. By using the props I will better improve the visual flow through the space and not leave empty corners and short pieces of wall. The updated layout will look clean and minimalist rather than 'empty'.

I also need to make three new pieces. I will use some of the folded triangles from the woodland shoot to make two large wall hanging sculptures. The third piece will be completely new. With that in mind I began exploring with materials for making frames for the three pieces out of simple materials that will create some texture. I now have a number of new tasks to add to my project plan!

Making a Maquette

After a futile struggle with free layout software I decided that the best way to plan my gallery layout was to make a maquette. I'd thought that the quickest and simplest way was to put something together online but hadn't taken into account the steep learning curve involved with computer design programmes. After a morning of frustration and not particularly liking the results I discussed my options with the Level 3 Student Hangout group. The consensus was "You are a model maker. Why are you not making a maquette?" Well, okay... I had considered that obviously, but thought I could save some time investigating a digital option. I needed that jolt back to reality from the group.

With help from my partner in scaling a model of the Pie Factory gallery, I managed to put together a model very quickly; in the same amount of time as failing to get to grips with the software package; and the physical output is so much more satisfying.

I now need to place my images into the maquette and work out image sizes in relation to the gallery walls and sequencing. I have also discussed the option with a number of people regarding using my props in the gallery space. I was unsure about this at first as I do not want them to distract from the images. There is also an element of interaction with the viewer which is a good thing but with such a serious subject as the Target Practice work I do not want to cross the line between interaction and entertainment. Again the consensus seems to be that I really should use the props in the show. This means taking account of their positioning in the overall layout and if they need to be modified in any way to make them suitable for the space. Lots more to think about and do!

Exhibition Flyer

This is version three of the flyer I designed for the Target Practice exhibition. The previous versions had larger fonts in the info section and the consensus from the L3 Hangout group was it looked a bit clunky. I also made some minor changes to the way the address was laid out, timings so the opening times and the private view didn't run into each other, all thanks to feedback from the L3 group. This flyer along with my other preparations will form part of assignment three and will be critiqued by my tutor before it is utilized in my online marketing campaign.

p.s. the dark background of this image is so that the white of the flyer does not bleed into the screen background. It is for blog purposes only.