Hitachi Private View

The private view yesterday was a very stressfully classy and entertaining evening. The Hitachi Consulting staff were all really pleased with the catalogue, as were the students (I think) and they layed on a brilliant spread of wine and nibbles.  I can honestly say that it was a very deserving crescendo to the months and months of work that everyone has put into this project and I think that Jeff (The Organiser) was very pleased. The staff and guests were all very impressed with the work, and for the first time i actually stepped back from the curatorial nit-picking and saw the show for what it was. A very good one, with some really excellent pieces of work.
 We also stopped for a drink after the show with the majority of the PV guests and exhibitors- my last role project managing was to try and find a table big enough for us to all fit around. Not the easiest of tasks and by the time i had everyone sat down, people started to leave. A couple of us stayed until a bit later and had a good drink to the project, which i feel i will start to severely miss tomorrow when i can stop thinking about it-
Here are some pictures of the evening-

Catalogue out!

Nick finally got the catalogue out to the printers yesterday and fabulously managed to half the price of the batch with a one day turn around. I don't know how he does it- but i was very impressed. The catalogue is also being sent to him at work so i don't have to worry about collecting them. Again fingers crossed that they will all be delivered in time for the PV on Wednesday! Another thing i managed to get done today for Hitachi was the finalised guest list- that is all back and sorted. So we are on course for a fabulous night.

The Map from the central page of the catalogue
(It is better quality than this)

It was our first tour of the college today after our training last week, unfortunately it was a group of potential design students, so i don't think i answered their questions too well on the tours but the presentation in the lecture theatre went quite well beforehand. I'm off to another studio meeting now, to discuss the plans for tearing the walls down...

Working with Participants

I had a tutorial the other day to look through the work i had done over the summer, and it led to some interesting questions about why i don't involve my participants in my work. My initial response was that i don't want the people that i work with outside of college to feel as if i am using them for my own discourse. Of course thinking about it i do in some ways use these people for my own gain of knowledge, experiences but i would say only as much as you would be using someone by listening to a conversation to see what they have to say.  I would say that this is an interesting boundary though.  It leads to questions that have been raised in my thesis about artist intention and when socialising with someone starts to become 'using them' my thought of this from my thesis is that at the beginning of the year Boris Johnson employed a friend to have a key arts Job. Was that an intention of knowing Boris or an intention to get a good Job with a happy coincidence?
I'm still not keen on the idea of making participatory pieces of work for the people i work with. In some ways I see it as un-ethical and it would be like using them as Guinea Pigs in an experiment. I would invite them to an exhibition and if they were too ask to be involved, they could defiantly be involved- that has happened in the past and everyone seems happy at the end of the work.
I was also told in the tutorial to try and make a mends with my studio, and use it for what it is. To be honest it is not the end of the world that the Blue Room has gone. I just slightly despise the fact that now i have to book space from my own studio, its time consuming...

Being behind

This blog is about exactly what it says on the tin. I'm behind in lots of things- I had my first thesis tutorial yesterday which went quite well considering i handed in something that was very ambiguous and incomplete, he gave me some advice about thinking about why i was writing the essay and how i should think about artists intention more from a human perspective. I think the discussion just generally calmed my nerves about it. but he gave me another hand in date for a couple of weeks time to get everything up to scratch.
The Catalogue was supposed to be sent to print on Monday, but after talking to the printers Nick found out that i had been given the wrong quote for what i wanted and it was actually going to cost twice as much. Nick is working on negotiations...
Finally, I went to senior section last night for our second meeting and only one girl turned up. When questioned if i had told them when the meeting was, i replied with yes- i sent an e-mail to everyone and set up a face book page, face book messaged, and for the girl that doesn't have Internet access, i sent a text. I don't think there was much more i could do to be honest. Hopefully I'm going to try and arrange a meeting for the week after next. It will be quite difficult to arrange it around college though. It was quite frustrating tonight because i had to come all the way back to Essex from London for nothing, and of course there is the fare to pay. I just wish they had said they couldn't make it.

Hitachi Catalogue

Fantastically my boyfriend has taken the design of the Hitachi Catalogue out of my hands. It was still at the point of not having any info or refinements on it the other day and there was a little problem about my design being very poor. He is going to mix the corporate of Hitachi with the conceptual of Chelsea- and get rid of everything purple that i put in it. He is also going to use the proper design programme on the computer and take control of lowering he price of printing. Yesterday morning we also went to the Hitachi Office at 8am to take some professional photos of the work (He is a photographer) before i had to be in college for my first seminar of the year - we also went back later that evening to finish up. It takes the pressure off of me to get it done-  however i still have to get information for the catalogue and relinquish control- which i have big issues with. I was very tired and worried by the end of yesterday, but the designs that Nick has come up with are so much more professional than mine and the photos are brilliant. I also had the opportunity to be his assistant. Although it wasn't completely a professional outfit, it was an interesting role to play- getting coffee and being in charge of the flash. We had one of those portable flash guns- only it was a couple of decades old so it was attached to a heavy box and looked like one from a spider man cartoon, brilliant.
Catalogue has to be completed by Monday. Fingers crossed we will have it done.

Thesis and Opt-in

I handed in my thesis today- a day early. You might think that i am quite proud of what i have written- this is not the case at all- I'm only handing it in early because i have to be somewhere at 8am tomorrow morning  until the contact desk closes. I managed to do about 1,300 of the 2,000 that we were supposed to hand in and it's not very polished.  I'm regretting not doing enough reading over the summer. My thesis is about funding in the arts and government hospitality with this funding which I'm finding out now is a very complex subject and i don't even know where to start. Hopefully i will have a  brain wave over the next couple of weeks and know exactly what i am doing.
Anyway, we had our studio induction meeting yesterday and most of the ideas discussed last week were taken well. It was difficult as expected- none of the 1st year students seemed to know what was going on and they just seemed to stare at the 2nd years presenting ideas- I'm still unsure if they had any input into what we had decided by the end. I was disheartened by the end of the meeting as to whether or not i wanted to stay in the opt in space, which is a shame because i have put so much time into it in the past year. I felt as if some very brash decisions were made at the end of the day that hadn't been discussed up until that point. The blue room has gone- which was part of the space last year- basically it was a space that belonged to the whole course, but attached to the opt-in space. A bit like a common room. My upset at this decision was that out of all of the space we had in the opt-in- this is the bit that i used. Not the bit that i used most, but the part that i used- full stop. I also got a very patronising response from another member of the space when i explained that i needed that space for meetings, and it is difficult to have meetings in a studio- "Were not going to stop you from inviting your friends in"- I don't think my point was understood at all.

Fundraising, Training, House Finding and Thesis

Things are slowly coming together to suggest how packed to the brim this year will be. It is only the first Monday of the working term and i haven't stopped today. We have 2,000 words to hand in on Wednesday for our thesis (A little pressure reminded to us in our third year meeting today). Something i should have taken more time on over the summer- I underestimated how busy i would be with work- not a valid excuse really, but something that i can possibly resolve by good time management now.
 On the upside though, we have found somewhere to live- I received the call during a training course on Friday morning to confirm- hopefully we will be able to move in this week- although i will probably have to leave it until the weekend now.
 The training course that i was in on Friday continued today as well. It was a course to aid public speaking and presentation skills- It was really useful, as we are just about to commence a year of prospective student presentations in the lecture theatre, which will most likely be daunting and full of in-answerable questions. The main aspect of the course that i thought was really great was that the two people that were giving the advice were graduates of our college that had started their own business doing these workshops. It did give me a bit of hope for when i leave college that i might be able to get a job or even work for myself- here's to hoping!
There is still this year to get through though- and there is lots of work to be involved with. After the stage 3 meeting we got together to talk about fundraising for the degree show. We need to raise £10-15,000 to fund everything including catalogues, drink and extras. We did have a very productive meeting though, where we spoke about positions we would like to take within the fundraising team- and lots of people were keen to put in ideas of what they could do to help. I think our first bake sale is in a week or so to start off the fundraising. So good luck bakers with that.
Better get off and continue writing my Thesis...