Solo Exhibition 'Reflection' sculpture, painting and drawing

 Reflection

Reflection, was an art exhibition by local emerging artist, Tristan Griffin, was held at C3 Kingscliff(24 sand street) , 6PM friday october 3^rd.

Tristan Griffin is a third year Advanced Diploma art student who majors in contemporary sculpture at Murwillumbah Tafe College.

The meaning of life, the origin of life and the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, human nature, ethics, devotional and ritual observance and the moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. These are universal aspects of the human condition and the foundations of religion. This body of work explores the relationship between religion, contemporary society and the human condition through a series of sculptures, drawings and painting.  

Catherine Lane opening the exhibition 

My amazing wife Marija Griffin pictured to the left and my sister in law Nobako Munro and (cute) son Andy Munro

Pre-acceptance of Exhibition

The attributes that I looked for were:

• Control of lighting
• Sufficient space as works were fairly large
• Kitchen/ toilets at venue
• availability on or near the school holidays of 3^rd term

Venues considered

• Artpiece Mulumbimby
• Curious art gallery, Chinderah
• sheoak shack,
• kingscliff town hall
• uniting church, murwillumbah

Venues approached

• Co-exhibiting with michele bevis at Citadel, Murwillumbah
• National C3 conference at Twin Towns
• REALMEN goldcoast conference at Currumbin
• C3 Kingscliff
• Byron bay Lone Goat gallery

• Co-exhibiting with michele bevis at Citadel, Murwillumbah (declined by us)
• National C3 conference at Twin Towns ( declined due to timeframe )
• REALMEN goldcoast conference at Currumbin ( rejected by venue due to past problems of commercial enterprise )
• C3 Kingscliff ( accepted )
• Byron bay Lone Goat gallery (accepted )

C3 Kingscliff was the last venue approached and it had never hosted an art exhibition, the opportunity to exhibit in kingscliff came up within 3 weeks of the presentation of artworks. The date of the exhibtion was chosen due to the availablility of the venue, the venue is vacant during the school holiday period, that allowed me to setup on the thursday for a friday night opening on the long weekend and to have sufficient time to pull down the exhibition on the saturday and cleanup for the sunday morning church service. The choice of the second weekend of the school holiday was to allow myself the maximum time to prepare and market the exhibition.

Exhibition preperation

3 of the artworks needed completion before the exhibition, 2 sculpture (threads and open project) and 1 drawing ( utopia and dystopia) as well as creation of plinths and hanging systems for the other 5 works . The first step once a date had been confirmed by the senior pastor, Steve Godfrey was to create a count down calender for 1 month before the exhibition, and to create a TODO list that convered everything that needed to be completed before the exhibition.

preparing artworks for exhibition creation on plinths and finishing artworks

preparing transport – trailor hire

Public liability Insurance was covered by the venue but I have become a member of the ceramics association with insurance(NAVA and Flying arts insurance was explored but I currently do not meet the requirements for membership).

Transportation of artworks

The options for transportation of the artworks were:

• Purchase of towbar for car ($99) and rental of trailor ( $60 for 24hrs)
• Trailor hire , furniture trailor($100) which is enclosed
• Small truck hire ($88) for 24hours
• Asking for assistance from friends and family

I ended up getting my father to assist and loan their trailor (due to available funds) for the setup and pull down of the exhibition. This did mean modifying the trailor to fit the coffee men wall and having to drive very slowly and carefully to the venue. Some damage did occur to the artworks.

Advertising/marketing/media

2 weeks before exhibition

• before the start of the school holiday I created a quick flyer to be handed to teachers and students, this was black and white and included a map of kingscliff on the back.

• creation of a mailing/invite list. This was predominately through facebook and tafe as I have been developing a list of approximately 600 people
• creation of a promotional image which was used for all marketing of the exhibition to create continunity, final image was formated to be printable in:
  • 5 x 4 inch flyer for printing
  • facebook banner format for website mainpage, this was in 2 formats, one for the leading up to the exhibition night, the second was for the actual day of the exhibition.
  • Poster format for printing
  • banner for catalogue
• creation of a catalogue

1 week before exhibition:

• didactic panels and do not touch signs, which were printed on 5 x 4 inch cards
• billboards for road side and intersection
• personal messages on facebook weeks in advance,
• posting flyers on notice boards in kingscliff, tweed heads and murwillumbah,
• posting on swapmeet and billboard websites for this region
• changing banner on facebook and posting picture reminders and teasers
• creating a facebook event leading upto the day of the exhibition

The exhibition space

C3 church Kingscliff, 24 sandstreet. Usual purpose of the building is:

• church service on sunday morning 10am till 1pm
• dance school during week
• music band practice during week
• prayer meetings friday morning
• Youth group friday night

Important to note that I had to work around these regular events, during school holidays the Dance school and Youth group do not run.

The space is large ( 15m x 12m ) with off white walls and high ceiling (4.5m) to the east end a stage protuding 3 metres from the wall and to the west a set of stairs leading to a sound and light control system.

The building has male and female toilets, a fully setup kitchen accessable and sufficient off street parking.

A lighting bar in the space located near the stage had 2x 500w stage lights and I added 3 halogen spotlights to this system. Additionally I added 2 standard spotlights and 2 halogen spotlights to the west end of the space, mounting them to the edging of light and sound box.

As the exhibition was late evening/night very little natural light went into the space, the space generally does not allow for much natural light as the south facing windows are covered only allowing light to come in through the south facing door.

The size of the room did dwarf the works.

Setting up the exhibition

The following is the list of artworks selected for the exhibition, they were chosen for the connection to the overaching theme of the exhibition which was the relationship between religion, contemporary society and the human condition:

1. Daily prayer Coffee beans
2. Water baptism News paper, magazine , aluminium , plastic
3. Armor of god Handwritten scripture , steel armature
4. The bible Paper, mirror
5. Church community baby clothes and threads
6. Utopia/dystopia chalk pastel on mdf
7. Identity collage
8. why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? Oil on canvas

The following is point forms for each of the artwork setup and rationale:

1.Artwork name: Daily prayer

Didactic panel position, reasoning: located on the support wall, positioned at eye average eye hight (5.5ft) which was slightly above the height of the figures for ease of readability

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: Against the west wall facing towards the east, offset to the north due to the 'cry room' window just south.

Lighting: 2 Halogen spotlights projected from the main stage bar

2.Artwork name: Water baptism

Didactic panel position, reasoning: located on the plinth, positioned at the foot of the human figure as this was closest to the door and most likely place to be seen

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: South west near the entrance (internal space), the work is lowset, my intention was to not have the first artwork dominate the space. Unsure if this was successful

Lighting: 500w stagelight pointing west towards the work

3.Artwork name: Armor of god

Didactic panel position, reasoning: located on the plinth, was to the front left of the armour, due to lighting the panel would be readable as it would not be in the viewers shadow.

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: North east end of the room (internal space), the armour was positioned to face the stage light, it was almost looking up at it, this was to create dramatic effect, as though the armour was looking to heaven

Lighting: 500w stage light pointing west towards the work

4. Artwork name: The bible

Didactic panel position, reasoning: located on the plinth, to the right of the pulpit facing direction, for ease of readibility

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: north west end of the room (internal space) positioned between the armour and coffee men wall, facing towards the stage so that lighting was behind the viewer

Lighting: 1 halogen spotlight mounted on the raised stage control box

5.Artwork name: Church community

Didactic panel position, reasoning: panel was positioned on the top right hand of plinth, at chest height for ease of readibility

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: south east end ( internal space ) directly under the stage light bar to make use of a top down lighting, this cast strong dramatic shadows on the figure of christs. The position of this artwork was the least successful as you had to walk towards 2 very bright lights to see it.

Lighting: 1 halogen spotlight mounted on the stage light bar, directly overhead.

6.Artwork name: Utopia/dystopia

Didactic panel position, reasoning: located on the floor at the left hand of the utopian side of the artwork.

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: center south of the room (internal space) this artwork had to have a tape square marked around it for display as it could be knocked over.

Lighting: 1 flood light mounted on raised stage control box facing the utopian side. This was to enhance the concept of the work. Over all I do not feel this artwork was resolved.

7.Artwork name: Identity

Didactic panel position, reasoning: panel located on the wall to the left of the artwork at eye height (5.5ft) for readibility.

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: West end of the North wall , due to the size of this work it had to be positioned between the two air conditioners. The height of the hanging was to enhance the scale of the work.

Lighting: 1 flood light mounted on raised stage control box

8.Artwork name: why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?

Didactic panel position, reasoning: located on the wall to the left of the artwork at eye height (5.5ft) this also included an extra panel for the newspaper clipping.

Display poisition: reasons for display position and lighting:

Position: East end of North wall, spaced away from Identity artwork to reduce aethetic flooding. Hung with paintings center being at eye height (5.5ft)

Lighting: 1 halogen spotlight mounted on stage light bar, central focus

The exhibition opening and feedback

Approximately 80 people attended the opening of the exhibtion, the opening of the exhibition was done by Catherine Lane at 6.15pm, catering was done by my amazing wife, she prepared a selection of canapes and punch bowl (costing a total of $90) , exhibition catalogue was also provided, artworks were not for sale (commercial ventures are not permitted in the space).

Feed back positive , many peoples response was that they were now inspired to do art, many people asked and took photos of the artworks and re-posted them on social media. A large number of text messages and social media messages from potential clients with enquiries. I feel that the greatest success was that the Senior pastor video taped all the the artworks to be passed on, the exhibition has led to the space being available to other artists and the potential for a dedicated art space being funded by the church in the near future.

From a technical point of view I feel that I could have used the space better, but with the limited time and experience and overall response I feel that the show was successful and look forward to exhibiting in the future and applying what I have learnt.