Over the past week, we have been preparing the studio space for degree show and assessment, painting and filling the walls and then hanging our work.
As I have a large space to fill and have a different colour on the wall too, it took me a long time to get my space looking how I want it to, and these photographs document that process.
As you can see from the photos above, when I painted the walls, I first spotted over any particularly dark areas on the all, before painting over the patches with the roller. This worked nicely for the grey/green wall, although sadly there were some patches on the white wall which I really struggled to cover, no matter how many coats of paint I applied to the wall. I ended up having to put some filler over the particularly bad areas and painting over that with the white paint, which seemed to finally cover it.
I finished painting the walls last Thursday, and this week, I have been working on hanging and installing my work in the space, which has been much more challenging and has taken much longer than I was expecting it to.
Before starting to hang everything, I had to work out how exactly I wanted everything to be laid out, and the distances between each drawing and label that I wanted on the wall too. Calculating this took much longer than I was expecting, as I had to measure the space and calculate the gaps that I needed between each drawing so that they fit nicely on the wall, not being too crowded or not sufficiently filling the wall. I decided to have three rows of drawings and labels in the end – I considered having two, but they didn’t all fit on, and having three rows makes it a more engaging and impressive display as well.
Once this was calculated, I then had to actually hang the work, which I thankfully got help with, as this was very difficult to do on my own. As of yesterday evening, I had managed to hang all of my drawings, along with placing a few of the labels on the first two rows on the wall.
The above image is a panorama (although the quality of the image isn’t great, due to the distortion, it captured the entire wall in one go, which I was grateful for. Once all of my work is hung, I will make sure to document everything carefully, in sections with proper care of the camera and quality of the image) of the wall of drawings, where you can see the layout that I’m currently using. This involves leaving spaces where there are drawings that I haven’t completed yet, which shows both the continuation of my project, whilst also highlighting the fact that these plants are critically endangered and are disappearing from the world, thus reinforcing the message and reason of the series.
I am pleased with how they look on the wall currently, although I think that they will look more effective once all of the labels are on the wall, as this will make the whole work much easier to understand and to interpret.
I also have been working on installing my rewilding project, which is designed to look like a cross between an office and a potting shed – where someone has been working on the project and has quickly stepped out of the room. The above photo shows an in progress stage of its set up, where I have the map on the wall (folded in half to highlight and centre Kesgrave, which is where the project is situated), with the desk underneath it, which now also has various ‘gardening’ tools and equipment, such as plant labels, gardening gloves, a small garden fork/rake and seeds. This area still needs more work, and I hope to add post-it notes and labels, which will create a more lived in feel to the piece, as well as conveying more information to the viewer about the project and the connection and separation between the drawings and the rewilding project.
