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Choice blogs - Paul Stone selects Gemma Hadley’s ‘Pretty Vacant’
Paul Stone selects Gemma Hadley’s ‘Pretty Vacant’
'Pretty Vacant’ bills itself as “a touring visual arts exhibition featuring the best in brand new fine art and craft by students and recent graduates”. Over the last year they have staged temporary exhibitions in a number of empty shops and other buildings. Reading this blog makes me recall my own beginnings as I moved from ‘artist’ to ‘artist/organiser/whatever-else-was-necessary’ in setting up exhibitions in similar venues in Newcastle upon Tyne.
I’m often asked advice on ‘how we did it’ back then (the late 1990s!) and although my memory’s not failing yet, one thing I regret now is that the documentation of those temporary projects I was involved in ranges from pretty scant to non existent. There’s a few slides sitting in a box file but nothing that provides the same level of documentation as this blog. We were simply too focused on the end product rather than on how we arrived there.
What I think this blog gets across so well is the practicalities (and sometimes problems) that need to be considered in the process of setting up a self-organised project in a temporary venue. As featured regularly in a-n there are many such projects currently underway across the UK, and even the government is now supporting some of them in our recession-hit town centres. Month-by-month this blog provides a useful resource for those thinking of embarking on a similar undertaking, highlighting both the positive outcomes as well as potential pitfalls.
Paul Stone is a Director of Vane gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, and an artist.
Go to Pretty Vacant »
Go to Vane gallery »
Subscribers may also be interested in the article Artists in empty shops in which Dan Thompson from The Revolutionary Arts Group reveals how artists are once again making use of empty spaces as a means to kick-start both the cultural and economic well being of town centres, and suggests seven steps to enable this area of practice to flourish.
To see previous Choice blogs go to Choice blogs archive »
First published: a-n.co.uk November 2009
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