The Story behind the Exhibition
Our one day painting course is unique in the way it focuses away from technical accomplishments, the received understanding of what art is and should be. It embraces the art of the individual. We are truly encouraged to explore our own style above all else. Technical skills are developed to compliment our work rather than take centre stage.
Each of our works are truly unique and individual to our styles and areas of interest which presented as a challenge when trying to find a cohesive theme; It felt right to look back at famous exhibitions of the past, The Secession movement of Munich and Vienna felt like a perfect springboard for inspiration on how to approach exhibiting our own work. Their belief in rejecting the rigors and restrictive environment of the nationalised salons for exhibitions that embraced individual style and creativity really felt like a match in sentiment and in some ways in historic moment.
The secession movements were responding to a rise in nationalism, fascism and a turbulent time of uncertainty and division when freedom of expression was threatened and restricted. This felt poignantly similar to this uncertain moment of history with the pandemic, Brexit, populism and all the challenges that go with it.
The things that really unite us with secessionists beyond our historical moments is our embracing of creativity and style and our support of each other in this process.
We have worked together to select pieces we feel most represent ourselves and our peers as artists, as we have also worked together the last two terms to support each other in working towards becoming the artists we want to be. This exhibition doesn’t necessarily have a theme in the traditional sense of the word but like the secessionists our theme is not having a theme.
Link to our Fisheatmen instagram page
Val's Project Brief - Virtual Exhibition
As a group you are going to work towards presenting a virtual exhibition of the mixed media/collage art works you have created this term. You can use a free software platform such as ARTsteps or Mozilla Hub to build your online exhibition although you might want to research other platforms too.
You will need to think about the following: - an exhibition name. a collective statement and unifying theme for the works in your exhibition. how many, what size, artworks per person? (make sure that digital photographs of your work are of the best quality). how many partitions/sections/rooms in the exhibition? the overall design/colour scheme of the gallery what information about each artwork will be displayed and how? whether to include individual artist statements, bios, cvs etc. how to promote your exhibition – e.g. Instagram, facebook, website,twitter.
Email announcements, videos etc. It is up to you how you split up the workload, but it is important that everyone is involved. To that end it is important to keep records of the meetings you have, and any decisions made while also recording who was present.