Knee pads for the North
AT LAST I’m on the train after a grueling 4 day ‘hang’ of our Leeds show for the Northern Art Prize. We are really pleased with the final result, but boy was it a slog.
It all came flooding back to me on day one when we arrived to find progress on our space a ‘little delayed’ about 6 hours into day one I was already reacquainted enough with the familiar pain of installing an exhibition to remember why we haven’t really had one for years! Making films can be exhausting hard work and emotionally grueling but it can also have ‘highs’ that I have yet to encounter whilst scrabbling around on a grubby gallery floor or trying to fix something to a high wall with inappropriate fixtures.
The worst thing is your knees … within about an hour of arriving Karen wished she’d bought her knee pads (which we did in the end purchase when we used to regularly install and de-install our huge Island model!) as you seem to spend an awful lot of time on the floor moving things about. You never have the right screwdriver and I think someone might even have pinched my tape measure.
Still as Matthew Olden would say ‘mustn’t grumble’ it’s finally up and it looks great even if we do say so ourselves.
A MASSIVE THANKS is due to the East Tilbury Bata Resource & Reminiscence Centre who have lent us much of their precious archive for the show, mixed in with the Bata-ville materials it’s made for a really interesting screening space/archive. Also due are thanks to Tim for helping with the hang and Sue Giovanni for her patient work on our new film ‘Little Deluxe Living’ finished late the night before we left for Leeds. Thanks to go to Andrew & John at Leeds City Art Gallery who soldiered on helping with our rather ‘unusual’ hang right up until the Private View wine started to flow.
Wish us luck, we’ve gone completely over board on effort for the show and there is a prize – as Karen keeps reminding me – “we’re in it to win it”!
Our Bata-ville installation
Part archive, part exhibition
Then at 2.00 everyday it becomes a mini cinema
for a screening of the full length documentary
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