Curating the exhibition/ planning:

During our reccie to Peckham Levels, we started to curate the exhibition and plan properly, exactly what we planned to do. Myself and another member of the group (Joe) met with the class, groups A and B at 10:15am, and we started planning by ourselves initially as the other two members were late. We spoke about the places in Peckham Levels that we liked the best and where we would like to exhibit our work the most, we both particularly liked the large white ramp round the back, not the entrance one, and we also liked the idea of hanging work above the tables in the main seating area above the yellow wooden tables. We also looked up the exact sizing of various print sizes that were available to us, so we were prepared, when we measured our exhibition space we’d know what size print would fit in the space best e.g. A2 or A1.

Eventually the other two members of our group arrived so we could start looking through all of our work and pick what works go best with each other and help each other pick our final images. We had rough prints of our work on A4 and A3 paper so we laid them out on the table to look through all the work as a group. I was quite shocked to see that the group member who we’d had no contact with for a while had turned up with just architecture images, which she said she’d taken quite last minute and didn’t really know how they linked to our theme at all. This would be fine as the other group member had taken architecture as well, but we all thought she was doing fashion, which meant hers and mine would have been quite similar (with the use of people) but now mine stood out as everyone did architecture/ people further away and mine was close up portraiture. This lack of communication and commitment did cause a bit of an issue because we didn’t know what to expect at all. Our exhibition curator came over to help us pick our images and assess our work, and we all choose our one favourite image to show her, putting them all in a row on the table. My strongest photograph (in my opinion and also Joe’s opinion) was the one with the coffee cup, however due to the quick change in ideas in the group, that image didn’t go with rest in terms of colour and lack of architecture, and initially this did upset me quite a bit because I grew quite attached to the image, and I felt like it would have worked fine if other members stuck to their initial idea, and did what they told us they were going to do, not changing it completely last minute. However, one of the portraits I took actually went okay with the others because the background shows the graffiti on the community centre that my model really liked, so the addition of architecture meant it went a lot better aesthetically with the other member’s work.

Our show curator then assigned all the groups a space that would be the space where we exhibit our work next Friday. Our group was given the top end of the left side of the wide white ramp, so we went to measure the space. Right at the top there’s some unusable space, like some directional signs that we can’t cover up and also just underneath that, the floor angles upwards, so we can’t use that either. We measured the usable space, firstly finding out what the midway point of the wall was so each group had equal space. The entire wall measured 6m83, so halfway was roughly 3m40, as for height, it was different at different ends, at the top it was 2m, and at the midpoint it was 2m21. At his point, just after measuring the wall, two of our group members wandered off, so Joe and I were left to figure out print sizes, we were initially annoyed by this but we decided to get on with it and get it done, otherwise we’d be behind. Using pencil we roughly sketched on the wall the sizes of A2 and A1 paper using the measurements we’d researched earlier, we saw that while A1’s would fit in the space, it’d be too squashed, so we decided to have 2 A2 prints and 2 A1 prints as it fits in the space better, allowing for some space between each print. We also decided to have them on the wall going down at an angle, so each print is slightly lower than the one before it to follow the natural slant of the ceiling. Finally, we decided to have my work first as an A2 print, then Joe and Matt’s as A1’s and lastly, Esme’s at the end as an A2 landscape.