An alternative space take down- thus marks the end of term

The end of term and a month off to catch up with all of the work i have been holding off for a couple of weeks. Although... i still have  a couple of things to do in college next week.
I took down the exhibition this afternoon- rushing in before 2pm so i could say goodbye to Sam before he ventures out to Canada for a couple of months- I actually got to college at 10 past 2 and dropped his Christmas card outside which i then had to find. I 'm the friend that is difficult to deal with, but you don't have the heart to tell them.
Anyway, as i  took down the show and moved all of the furniture out of the Opt-in space ready for the MA students over Christmas, somebody turned up to see the show. It was quite upsetting really- due to the lack of people that had come to see the show that she would come in just as i had finished packing up. It was actually the girl from the Saturday school that was interested in performance as well, so i felt doubly bad that she had come after college with a friend and there was nothing to see. We had a beer though and talked about the show. Joe ran to get some footage of my piece of work and i gave her a bit of a tour of the studio to show her what had been in the exhibition. It was really nice that she was interested enough to turn up though- she was very complimentary of the work too.

Photos of 'An Alternative Space'

Some images from "The recession will be over by Christmas:

An Alternative Space: The Private View

Everything came together in the end! Hurrah!

The exhibition did look very good in the end, despite having to pretty much curate the show on my own yesterday- all of the work that was said to be going into the exhibition turned up and looked pretty good in the spaces that i had chosen, Sam helped a hell of a lot too with setting up projectors for the black space and making sure the double projection timing that i wanted to do worked. There were a couple of last minute changes involving having to move one of the sculptures into the breakout space because it was fragile- and moving me upstairs with my performance because of the people still working in the studio (One of the main decisions was that we had to leave the space for people to be able to work in) That was fine though because it meant some of the more subtle pieces were not lost to my Buffet. There was a bit of a let down in the end that not many people actually turned up for the private view- although its understandable that people didn't have time to help with set up and curation, I'm shocked that the people exhibiting didn't bother to come.

I got some good feed back about the overall organisation and look of the exhibition, so i am happy for that reason -although i didn't feel that my work really showed itself very well aesthetically after the performance- probably due to the fact that i had to get that balloon covered table cloth- oh, and some Graphics students came in to trash the room- throwing food all over the place. I thought the performance went well- the fictional roles that i subtly gave to people throughout the evening were totally set by the end of the hour and from talking to people afterwards i was very convincingly stressed. One of the participants even thought that i had managed to loose all of my money and was very indebted to the bank so told another participant off when i went to buy him tea from the Tate (Another little nugget of information on wartime parties- my nan said that tea was rationed- but not in cafes so you would go over to a cafe to buy tea instead of brewing it yourself- one of the participants was asked to bring sugar along with them to go in the tea) A couple of my favourite parts of the performance were when everyone took it upon themselves to stand for the queens speech- one of the fictionally younger participants sneakily had a drink of beer and i told her off- and when everyone clapped the fictional father at the end of the performance for 'bringing the food to the table'
Photos to come...

Char's Birthday

I have just finished all of my duties that i needed to get done for tomorrows exhibition- DVD's burned, shopping bought and costume and equipment all in my bag for tomorrow. Unfortunatley i couldn't get the tableware in Sainsbury's that i wanted to for the work tomorrow, but there was a boundary that i could only shop in one shop for the work (Just as in wartime you would've only been allowed to use your ration book in one shop)- So i had to make do with Balloon covered tablecloths and napkins- i think anything would've been better than this!
I'm surprised that i managed to get it all done today actually- although i am completely stressed and tired after hearing that the event on thursday has been cancelled due to the protest on thursday- but this should help with my stressed mother character tomorrow.

Charlotte was quite upset that i had to leave so early on her birthday too- I was supposed to be going out to dinner wih my family but i didn't realise how late they were going. I think i made it up by playing a board game- plus the present that i got her was pretty nifty- an ATM machine money box. I would like one of those.
The board game we played is actually very fun- it's called the Logo game and the main aim i think is to show you how much of a consumer you really are. I'm very good at it, which means that i know every brand and ad on TV -it seems that i also know alot about car branding and what chocolate bars look lik if you cut them in half.  Well worth playing though- the only quiz i'm any good at, well,  maybe second to Disney Trivial Persuits.

Invitations via e-mail

Dear Rob

You are cordially invited to:

'The recession will be over by christmas' festive party and buffet.

I will be receiving guests tomorrow at 4pm for a pre-buffet drink outside room A124, in Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Please dress accordingly, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow:-

Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you please bring along with you some sugar?

RSVP: nataliebays@msn.com


Sent from my iPhone




I decided to use e-mail in the spirit of the new e-card craze that seems to be appearing in companies at Christmas nowadays. Instead of receiving a charity Christmas card as you would about 5 years ago, as an 'eco' solution companies have started to use e-Christmas cards to send out to large numbers of clients and staff. I find this questionable to whether or not it is a solution to stop cutting down trees, especially as i have seen the amount of waste in stationary cupboards in various 'brand changing' estate agents. It is more likely a simple way to save money.
The other thing noticeable about this invite is the request to bring something along to the buffet in the wartime spirit- and of course the contradictory 'sent from my iphone' stamp.

Setting Up in an Alternative Space

The end of the first day of set up and we have approximately one piece of work on the wall and one that is in bubble wrap in the middle of the space. The black space however is set up and bits of wall have been spruced with white paint. People don't seem too interested in helping with the curation part and unless everyone is in on Wednesday morning willing to help with the set up i don't see how we can do a group curation. I've also had a couple of late submissions today- but at least they could show me their work, so that's not too disconcerting. It wasn't too bad today- I'm probably over-exaggerating the lack of work that got done because by the end of the day the space did look spick and span. Sam deserves a big pat on the back also- as always he managed to be there on time (Well before me) and helped me out a lot- especially with the harsh task of hanging black-out curtains in the doorways of the black space and working out where to put projections etc (technical advice was very much appreciated). Tomorrow is going to be jam packed- despite the set up dates being today and Wednesday- a couple of the part-time students can only bring in their work to me tomorrow so i will have to pop into college, as well as travelling to Essex for my sisters 11th birthday and then back into London again to do a last minute Christmas shop for Wednesday (Another wartime tradition). A lot is now relying on everything going well and to plan on Wednesday, yet as much as I've planned i still don't trust myself to have remembered everything.
Exhibition Poster completed by myself today (Not my usual style, but i thought i should make the poster simple and illustrative):

Queens Speech to Parliament

I think i have had a breakthrough this weekend after finding this speech- shall definitely be played in the recession Christmas dinner-

Opt-In space Exhibition: An Alternative Space

We have spoken about having exhibitions in the opt-in space for a long time now, but they have never actually amounted to anything- there are often groups that members of the studio prepare, but nothing that is collaborative between students. This is what i am hoping for with this exhibition and i have had a lot of good press about organising an exhibition. The date of the private view is actually next Wednesday and we had a meeting today (after several previous discussions in the opt-in space) about a couple of finalisation's. The space is going to be kept as a studio during the exhibition, so it will be more like an open studio event- the group thought that this was the main ethos of the space and wanted the exhibition in keeping with the work that happened here. Also we decided to keep the name 'An alternative space' for the exhibition as it can relate to any of the work submitted, because we do all work in an alternative space. The process now is becoming quite exciting as there are a lot of works that are beginning to be submitted- Salt are planning to have a whole day event on the Thursday and I'm planning to do my 'The recession will be over by Christmas' performance in the opt-in space on the Wednesday, hopefully I'll also be able to set up the black space into a screening room. The only thing that is worrying me at the moment is that quite a few people have said that they would like to be involved but haven't actually shown me images of or even told me dimensions of what their work is. I feel a bit of a free for all coming on for next week when we start to set up. We are planing to meet again next week on Monday to spend the day curating,  tidying the space and hanging first pieces of work, apparently one of the students has a sculpture that is 2m tall- I'm now thinking of possible places this could be placed- there's not many, but it could really create an interesting dynamic within the open studio space (Initial curaton ideas below).
My piece of work for the show is lacking a little at the moment i feel so I'm going to have to finalise some ideas over the weekend about how i want to stage the dinner.

SNOW!

As the blizzard swallowed up all of the little houses in old London town and isolated towns in parts of Kent and delayed people getting to work and forced a number of commuters from Brighton to sleep on a train throughout the night, Natalie was traipsing through the snow in Essex buying fags for her nan.

It was very cold, and just as i always do, i had managed to leave going to see my nan until a day that it snowed. Not only that but i couldn't go a different day because my nan had ran out of cigarettes and milk and the sheltered housing that she lives in is never properly gritted outside (the local council do know how to deal with snow, don't they) I usually refuse to buy my nan cigarettes- but as i was going to be the only one seeing her in a couple of days i felt as if i had too (I got id'd as well- proves how often i buy these types of things). She also warned me before i got there that people would be panic buying milk so she wasn't fussed which type she had- as long as i got some. She's right- people do panic buy milk in a crisis- but it doesn't make sense "we have no food but as long as we have milk in our tea everything is dandy!" The trains weren't too bad in the end either, i managed to get to Essex on Monday and back to London on Tuesday, usually anything is a reason to stop the trains in Essex but i think this time it was obvious that Kent was hit the worst and they were still running a service (In a town in Kent a news reporter measured the snow as being a '4 pints of milk carton' deep!- that's accurate milk crisis measuring for you)

Anyway, at my nan's we had a good chat about my upcoming exhibition in the Opt-in space. I'm making a piece of work relating Christmas in the war to Christmas in the present recession so i wanted to see if there was anything she could give me tips on. All i found out really was how awful Christmas was if you were evacuated- she told me one story about how for Christmas one year she had to sit in silence all day with her evacuee family while the other children played and then had to be grateful for a pair of ankle socks she had been given. A little different from the Children nowadays with their Wii's and DS's. I think i might make a point of that in the work. Also she gave me a funny idea involving ladies stockings. I'm unsure if I'll use the actual information she gave me in the work. But it is a good insight into the past that i can definitely reflect on in my performance.

I'm helping in the Christmas fayre tomorrow, however if the snow doesn't ease up I'm not sure if it will be going ahead? I'm supposed to be doing hook the duck, face painting and a cake raffle (picture of the cake i made below- it is Chelsea college in the snow!) I've also made some Christmas cards- hopefully they will sell well- if not I'll be a little embarrassed, and I'm also to run the Tombola before Anika gets out of her seminar and help Joe set up. I feel a long day of fundraising ahead...