A quick gallery view

I have created these images to show roughly what I am imagining for my gallery space. The top image shows the gallery would look like in the Hyde Park setting, but I also want it to have 'Pro Tem' above the entrance, so that the door is more prominent. The bottom image shows the inside of the gallery, obviously without any of the art work. I wanted these bright white walls to contrast to the fragile organic art, and also to the shocking red of Gallaccio's flowers.

Press Release

Pro Tem

Anya Gallaccio, Darren Almond, Sam Taylor-Wood, Tonico Lemos Auad, Rivane Neuenschwander

4^th June – 1^st July 2011

Hyde Park, London

This exhibition explores the idea of passing time. All of the featured artists deal with objects that deteriorate over time, or time as a repetitive cycle. The exhibition acts as a reminder that life is short and everything fades away in time.

Anya Gallaccio works with the theme of deterioration over time. She uses fresh flowers in both Preserve Beauty, 2000, and Red on Green, 1992; allowing them to wilt and transform naturally over the course of the exhibition. In Aspire she highlights the passing of time by letting candles burn, symbolising the inevitability of death. Gallaccio makes viewers realise how precious time is; her work constantly transforms and ultimately destroys itself, meaning her work can only last as a memory.

Tonico Lemos Auad also works with organic materials and the idea of transformation over time. Auad pin-pricks portraits onto bunches of bananas, which can only be seen as the fruit begins to rot and decay over time. There is only a short period of time that it can be seen though, as the bananas completely blacken and the image is lost.

Time is integral to Darren Almond’s work. In Tide, 2008, 600 digital clocks completely cover a wall. Every minute the mechanisms causing the numbers to change go off in unison, causing a loud clacking sound. Mono Chrono Pneumatic Red works with the same theme – a large 10 metre clock with a mechanism at the back which loudly changes the time every minute. Almond’s work constantly reminds us that another minute has gone by. From anywhere in the gallery the sound of the clocks changing is unavoidable, relentlessly reminding us that our time is running out.

The image of a bowl of fruit in Sam Taylor Wood’s Still Life, 2001, is like a classic vanitas painting. The video then shows the fruit decomposing until it is nothing but a grey mass. The film shows us deterioration over time, reminding us again of the shortness of life and that time is passing us by.

Rivane Neuenschwander’s Chove Chuva, 2002, is an installation where 25 aluminium buckets are suspended at different heights. The buckets are full of water, and a small hole in the bottom of each bucket allows the water to drip constantly into buckets on the floor. Every 4 hours a gallery employee has to refill the water into the highest buckets, using the buckets from the floor, and the cycle starts all over again.  

The gallery is a temporary structure which will be built in Hyde Park, which will be disposed of at the end of the exhibition, along with most of the art work.

Final Poster

Location

I had already decided that I wanted my temporary gallery structure to be in a natural environment, because a lot of the art work is made from organic materials so would be appropriate in a natural setting. The exhibition is about time passing, and the fragility of life, so I don't think the exhibition would suit being in a 'concrete' environment, because that has a feeling of permanence which would contradict my theme. Therefore I have decided I want my fantasy gallery to be located in a park.

Firstly I started looking locally and around Birmingham for the ideal park for this, but they were all either too small, too many trees or not flat enough ground for my gallery to be built on, and I wanted to choose a patch of land that was appropriate and where this could be theoretically built.

I then began looking at London parks and decided that Hyde Park had the best spot for my gallery. Below is a map of Hyde Park, and the small square towards the bottom of the park represents my gallery. I have kept this to scale so it would be exactly this size in proportion to the park if it were to be built. I have also included a close-up satellite image of the gallery's location so you can see it more clearly. I chose that particular spot in the park because it is completely flat, and quite easy to get to because it's between a path and a main road.
 

 

Developing the poster

 I really liked this exhibition poster I found for the Tate. I like the simplicity of it, the title is large and clear, and I think they grey text has quite a clean/clinical look about it. I like the use of colour as well here, most of the image is white, with some grey text, which makes the limited colour really striking.

 In this poster I used Darren Almond's piece 'Tide', and photoshopped an area of the clocks to appear in the poster, much like the colour chart image in the above poster by the Tate. I also used grey text to create the clinical feel of the above poster. I quite like the layout of the clocks in this poster idea, but I think it really needs some colour to contrast with the bright white background and light grey text. I think my red flower posters are more successful than this one for that reason. 










I tried out this image because I really wanted to get across the idea of time running out, The exhibition itself only has a short shelf-life as well because of the gallery structure being temporary, so I wanted an image that encouraged people to come and see it before it disappears forever. I like the idea behind this one, but don't think it's the most eye-catching of the posters, possibly because of the subdued colours. 

I do quite like this idea and colour scheme, but a poster needs more information than this, such as dates, venue and artists. I don't think this sort of layout would suit having more text down the side, and I also think that the flowers being their original red colour is more striking.














Next I need to work on completing my final poster, by adapting some of my better ideas and adding in all the relevant information. I have decided that I am going to choose the name 'Pro Tem' for my exhibition now though, because I though it had a nicer ring to it, and also the meaning of 'pro tem' is more appropriate for my exhibition, summing up the whole exhibition's theme.

Some initial poster ideas

Title

I have been brainstorming some ideas for names for my exhibition:

Here today, gone tomorrow
Nothing lasts forever
Ephemeral
Time after time
For now
Enduring time
Passing time
Time-being
Time Lapse
Transcience
Pro Tem

My favourite of these were 'time lapse' and 'pro tem'. I found the term 'pro tem' whilst looking up appropriate words for inspiration in the thesaurus. It's Latin and translates as 'for the time-being'. I think this phrase sums up exactly what my exhibition is about, as the theme is about change over time, and the exhibition structure itself is only temporary, so is just 'for the time-being'.