Exhibition @ The Art House

For our second year we had to organise, curate and host our very own exhibitions. After posting a statement about what kind of show I wanted to put on and getting no responses, at a year meeting there were five students leftover without a group. We decided to club together to make our show and thus, The Leftover Gang was born. That name was not my idea.

After a quick discussion we soon spotted some common ground between each of our works. We were all loosely making work to do with the environment and decided that this would be a good focal point for our show. We named it Odds & Ends.

The next obstacle we met with is the issue of where to host our show. We toyed with the ideas of public spaces but after having no responses to our plea we headed back to the drawing board. The suggestion of The Art House was my idea. I walk down the back roads to get to my studio and The Art House is on my route. I had seen them building the space for a few months and after it was finished my interest was peaked. I had never been inside The Art House before we decided to ask if a space would be available to us, and when we got in there I was pleasantly surprised. The main café space would have been a little small for all of us to have adequate room to breathe, but the larger space upstairs was perfect for us. White walls, wood floors and plenty of natural sunlight.

We booked the space soon after. We booked from the 15th to the 24th of April, but being the lovely people that they are at The Art House, they let us keep our work up for another week, free of charge. They were very happy to have us showing there as they are keen to build a relationship with Sheffield Hallam University, and us approaching them was great for both of us. They also let us negotiate on the price of hire, student discount woo!

Putting up our exhibition was the next task. We had already organised who would be in charge of curating the show, but sometimes things don't go to plan. Working with a group of strangers came with it's own difficulties, but we worked though it. My friend and I took charge of most aspects of the exhibition as a whole, a strange position for me to be in as I'm normally the shrinking violet hiding away at the back of the crowd. I took great pride in having my chance to be the boss and I enjoyed every second.

For our preview on the 15th of April, we decided to play up the 'homey-ness' of the art house, it being a café and all. We served tea and cake to our guests and it seemed to go down rather well, a welcome break from warm wine and crisps.

We had some excellent feedback from visitors and The Art House themselves, for which we are all very thankful.

Please see my other post for a full view of the work I exhibited,

Thank You!