After Venice: Exhibition

After Venice

From the 25th of March to the 5th of April, Fine Artist Mary Trapp and I held an exhibition in Project Space 2 at Plymouth College of Art entitled ‘After Venice’. The goal of this show was to represent the culmination of a year of thinking, a month-long research project and residency in Venice, and the development of our work afterwards.

Mary and I had not met before, despite being in close proximity on a couple of occasions, and I was excited to see her and her work in person. I thought that as this was a collaborative exhibition which I had planned on having a mutual benefit to our practice, I thought it would be best if we curated together on the day of installation. I am so glad that we agreed on this.

We found that as we arranged and rearranged works around the walls of Project Space 2, we began to see recurring themes within the drawings that we made whilst in Venice. Round, dome-like or spherical shapes, pillars, lines, greens, pinks, terracotta, transparency, density, porousness. The links between our drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures were so exciting to uncover.

We were able to find linking factors amongst the works, which led us to an exhibition that had a real sense of flow around the room, and the works really began to sing and bounce off one another.

I began to consider what would happen if we were to take our work to other cities, a sort of touring show, picking up Fellows along the way. Creating conversations, encouraging collaboration, cultivating relationships. Though I do not want to force anything to happen, I would be open to any opportunity to experiment in this space with other fellows whilst the embers of the residency still burn bright in our practices. Something to think about.

(If any Fellows are reading this - take that as an invitation to contact me!)

The private view was fantastic. It coincided with the private view of the Extended Diploma’s exhibition in Project Space 1, so there was a huge amount of footfall for the opening. I had a lot of great exchanges with students and professionals, and it was suggested to me that I ought to look into Art writing, which is something that I have always had an interest in (thank you Paul Fieldsend-Danks!).

Since the private view, my mind has been busy with thinking about the future of my practice. What to apply for, what to cut out, what to try, where to go. The exhibition has been a welcome space for reflection, comparison, understanding. I feel that it has given me a sense of what I do as an artist, where I am positioned in the art world.

My work for the show will be taken down tomorrow, though Mary has deinstalled today.

I want to thank Mary Trapp for her participation and help with this exhibition - she has been a fantastic person to collaborate with, and has filled me with confidence within my work. Her practice reaches out wide to include many different media and ideas, and I feel so inspired having worked with her on this project. I look forward to working with her again someday in the future.