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

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.

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.

Self Promotion

I'm trying to spend some time each day on social media promoting my work and taking an interest in the work of other artists. I'm using Facebook for my personal promotion to friends and family; Instagram and Twitter is for posts to a wider audience. On these platforms I've been using hashtags to connect with like-minded individuals and surprisingly this is working out quite well in terms of fostering an online social media presence.

Now that my Pie Factory exhibition is not too far away I need to ramp up my promotion and post about some of my preparations for the exhibition to keep the interest up.

 Facebook

 Instagram

Twitter

'Time' Exhibition - The Open Art Collective

As part of The Open Art Collective, an OCA student group that is partly comprised of members of the Thames Valley Study Group, we have an exhibition of work showing for the next two weeks. The theme is 'Time' and opens today at The Lightbox Gallery, Woking:

I enjoyed putting a project together for this exhibition. The work I submitted is called 'Crustal Deformations 1-5' and uses double exposure digital technology to juxtapose two disparate images together.

Crustal Deformations 1 – 5

Crustal deformation is caused by tectonic activity that compresses, tensions, and shears the earth's crust. Material on the surface deforms, creating new landforms that change positions, shape, and orientation.

In this series I conceptualise the geological process of crustal deformation by creating double exposures that merge cityscapes and the built environment with the natural one. The new landforms and oblique planes in my images remind us that in geological terms, the solid ground that we stand upon is an illusion relative to time.

My partner, Gerry, is a painting and drawing student with the OCA and also a member of the collective. We drove down to Woking for the hang on Monday and met up with the other students. The hang has mainly been organised by Catherine Banks and Dawn Langley and the finished exhibition is looking really good. We will be back on Thursday for the Artist's Evening and I'm looking forward to engaging with visitor's to the exhibition.

Regional Development Agencies

Alongside the National Arts Councils there are also Regional Development Agencies that offer support to aspiring photographer artists. For additional funding the Photographer's Gallery and Photoworks (Brighton) are Lens-based Regional Development Agencies for the Arts in England.

The Photographer's Gallery

https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/about-us/awards-and-partnerships

Looking at the Photographer's Gallery website they have an 'awards and partnership' section that details three pathways that could be utilized by an aspiring photographer. One of these is the 'Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize' that we are all familiar with. As a soon to be graduate photographer I don't feel it appropriate to be applying for my work to be exhibited in such a prestigious exhibition at this time. I'm not sure an artist can even apply, I think the artists are selected by a panel each year from well known practitioners. I've seen some amazing work exhibited at the annual prize by some amazingly talented photographers. I feel a small and personal exhibition that I can learn and grow from is the best approach at this stage.

The other application option with the Photographer's Gallery is to approach for funding for a photobook. The 'Bar Tur Photobook Award' publishes a photobook chosen from a number of applicants and is open to all that are studying at or just finished their photography degree studies. My 'Target Practice' body of work has been made with an exhibition mind so this approach would be problematic for the following reasons: There are only eleven images. A photobook format does not seem appropriate for such a small number and also, I certainly did not conceive the work with this format in mind. I could make more work but I would need a lot more time to achieve this. I think that attempting to shoehorn work made for a specific format into another is not the best way to approach my project.

The third option offered by TPG appears to be a mentorship programme. This option is more geared towards personal development rather than achieving a specific outcome towards a publication.

Looking at the options presented it seems a bit negative to dismiss them all. But at this stage of the course I think it is important to assess all the funding options for my exhibition and carefully choose the most appropriate pathway for me. This will involve analysing all the available resources and narrowing down and accessing the ones that will be most beneficial to where I am at this stage of my photography career. The process is very useful as I am developing an overview of how the grants and funding system works in this country and where I sit as a fledgling photographer artist within it.

Photoworks (Brighton)

https://photoworks.org.uk/jerwoodphotoworks-awards-2/

Photoworks can provide financial and mentorship assistance in the form of the Photoworks /Jerwood Awards. This substantial project grant may be awarded to any photographer artist that is within ten years of establishing their practice. The financial award is over ten thousand pounds and a mentorship programme and touring exhibition are also included in the package. There are no entry qualifications or age limit although current full and part-time graduates are excluded from entering.

This award appears to be aimed at graduates in photography that want to establish their art practice as well as those that did not follow the formal academic art route. In any case I am still an undergraduate at this point so I will file this information for future reference.

Applying for an Arts Council England Grant

Reading through the learning notes of section two of my course I realised I need to start planning a timeline of all the tasks that need to be actioned for my exhibition this year. The first task was to create a profile on the Arts Council England website for National Lottery funding. The profile takes a number of days to be validated before I can begin to fill in my application as an individual visual arts based practitioner. The project can fund eligible projects of between £1,000 - £15,000 with a 10% stake coming from outside the grant system.

There is nothing to lose in applying and this kind of interaction with the real-life system of grants and funding for the arts is what section two of the SYP course module is focused on.

While I wait for my profile validation I will look at the application process in more detail and continue with my study of SYP part two.

An Artist's Bio

I've spent most of the weekend trying to write an artist's bio and it has been really difficult and made me feel uncomfortable. Here's the result. It's a first draft I guess because I know it doesn't really fit the criteria for a bio that is supposed to be more about me than the work. But I guess there are bits of information that can be gleaned from it that will inform the reader about my personality - for good or bad! I also posted on my private Facebook account and some fellow OCA students and tutors provided links to some good advice for writing when mentally blocked. Here are the links:

https://filip-magnus-writes.blog/2017/05/23/writing-advice-the-messy-first-draft/?fbclid=IwAR0BGTXWw-naVZWY_iy_GrXUNxtBejHV8tj69t9hbQl_brDiMszBCYkcG1w

https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/apr/15/writing-artist-statement-tips-language?fbclid=IwAR3RQVOh4fIjqupazNm2uWlssJASQLVvH3aItr9DxbwKwtLqGnXikYYZdek

Bio:

I like to explore a chosen project through constructed imagery. This entails making props and re-photographing them to incorporate into visual narratives. I'm all about the narrative. I take a topic that I've researched and spend quite a bit of time thinking about it before I ever make any work. Sometimes all that thinking gives me sleepless nights and I have to reach across and doodle in my sketchbook visualisations of a thought that has been quietly nagging away at me. It can take a month or a few years for a project to get underway. Most of my projects are connected to Queer identity as that is part of who I am and I think it is important to make work on themes that I have a tangible connection to.

At some point the research has been done to death and there is a flurry of activity; prop making, scouting out locations, perusing my sketchbook for oblique truths – always thinking, always looking for that elusive moment when thoughts and ideas and visualisations crash together and something small coalesces into something larger, more profound. Once I know I'm there I find the work comes together very quickly and a series of images are made. They might need tweaking; that one idea that completes the series may remain ellusive for a while - but it doesn't take long once I'm fired up on a project.

My name is Michael Colvin and I'm a photographer artist. This is my bio and I think the work I make is more important than who I am.

An Artist's CV

I made a start on my artist's CV with the details of my art education and exhibition. This will be a very short CV! In fact so short that I listed my undergraduate BA degree and two exhibitions that will not be open until next year. Not much of a list but it is a start.

I had a look at a number of artist's CV's as recommended in the course notes and they are all very simple, just exhibition lists mainly. I decided to go with this simple format and I will add to it as I progress.

https://michaelmcolvin.myportfolio.com/cv

Setting up a PR database and Mass Mailer

Having finished a short to-do list of who I can contact for a portfolio review for my Target Practice work, I've moved on to the business of getting myself a mailing list spreadsheet for all my contacts. It is no surprise that it is mostly populated with friends and fellow UCA students, but there are a few professional contacts too so it's a start...

I've also signed up to Mailchimp, a mass email campaign manager/database app. I think I will be able to import my contacts from my spreadsheet into it once I'm ready to begin mailing my exhibition details.

I've also been working on my website. I've got the basic template sorted and purchased a domain name. I want to keep the website fairly simple with just my projects and some basic info. Again I've made a start on this and will continue to update it:

michaelmcolvin.com

Getting Feedback

The first section of this course discusses the type of networks that are available to a student on the final lap of the UCA degree programme.

A peer feedback network is vital for students to learn how to receive critique and respond to other's work in the same manner. Having support from fellow students when the work is developing and study deadlines are approaching is invaluable. I am lucky in that I have always taken part in the excellent study days organised by the UCA (formerly OCA). This has helped to develop a network of like-minded students that were willing to engage in the study of contemporary art but also to come together for mutual support. From this the Thames Valley study group has developed and we have monthly critique days, often attended by a tutor. We are also currently submitting our work for a group exhibition to be organised by ourselves in Woking next year. I'm also part of a Google hangout group for level 3 students which has been a good source of support; although I've not attended for a while, but hope to rejoin the group more frequently now I have more time.

A professional feedback network consists of input from a professional working in the creative industry. This could be a portfolio review and the course notes lists several contacts. I will need to think about this as they are mostly fee based. I do think I could definitely benefit from some outside feedback on the Target Practice work so I will look more closely at the list over the next week or so.

Other options are a professional working in the creative arts that the student already knows. I can think of one or two possibilities that isn't currently an UCA tutor that I could contact - I may do this too.

Before approaching anyone I need to think about the kind of feedback I'd like. The Target Practice work is 99% complete, so would I be asking about the work at this stage or for advice on how to move forward towards exhibition and making the work public. Both would be great!

I also have a to do list in my head of the other tasks that I need to have in place at this stage:

Promote my work on Instagram - I've created a second account for the Target Practice work and have begun to post occasionally with info about my exhibition. I have also tried to include work in progress for exhibition handouts etc, and my thoughts on the experience. I think that a more personal touch is always more interesting so that people can follow and become connected to the artist and their personal practice.

https://www.instagram.com/michaelmcolvin/

I've been regularly posting my wip on Facebook for friends, family and fellow students to view. I've had some encouraging feedback from doing this and I will continue to promote my new social networks and exhibition info back through this route to keep everyone in the loop.

Build a portfolio website - I've begun to do this using the Portfolio website builder software that is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud package that I subscribe to. Some other website builders have been suggested by fellow students so if this one doesn't pan out I have a list of others I can fall back on.

Twitter - I really don't like what I've heard about Twitter and all the negativity that gets voiced on there. I feel I will probably need to use this platform because of its wide reach but only in a limited way to link back to my Instagram and website. I'm not sure I want to engage much with that platform.

That's about it for the start of SYP. My exhibition space is also booked for July 2019 but more on that as I progress through the course.