Idea's for Publicity Stunts

Craig: I’ve had a few ideas for the publicity stunts we’ve planned for the week before the exhibition. One idea is to dress up in our clown outfits and walk (parade) around town playing this type of music >  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8vINCq_IAI out of a ghetto blaster, held up by one of us. The rest of us will be giving out balloons with our posters inside. Or we could do the same type of think but just loiter around the victoria square fountain.

Another Idea would be to do a kind of camouflaged wall stunt maybe with a piece of the striped wall paper we intend to use on the posters and the plinths. We could just put one strip of this up on a wall and try to camouflage one of us against this strip and as people walk past hand them flyers. 

Craig

Odette. Maxwell. Beth. Craig.

What a productive day we had! Beth, Odette, Craig and Max looked around the second, third and MA studios and having actually spoken face to face to artists have secured five pieces of work. We have also managed to get the names and numbers for several other students within the studios which we feel confident will ultimately provide us with a good body of work for our gallery. We left notes in the studio space to all the students who we couldn't talk to or locate and will hopefully get a positive response over the next few days! The body of work we have found we feel both fits within the theme and provides a healthy variety in media and style.

Having explored the studios we made a start on the posters. The slogan we chose to use on the posters is 'Freaks Wanted'. We also want to include small print (which we may cut out and stick on) at the bottom og the poster with details on time, date and location. The text font we chose was 'Carnival Freak Show'. After some thought we concluded that a red and white striped background would work well within our theme. The backgrounds have been printed by Beth and Max onto cartridge paper and Beth and Odette are going to cut the text out of lino tonight. These shall be printed tomorrow! There are ten posters being developed, which shall then be scanned, reduced and used as fliers.

We had a few other thoughts about our show,

• Plinths covered with wrapping paper/ fabric to fit in with the theme, such as circus platforms.
• Odette may be able to get hold of some helium which will be great if we bought colourful balloons, even if only a few to hand out to a few people in the exhibition on the opening night.
• Craig was also thinking of playing the mandelin.
• If we do want masks we need to get something sorted, Emma if you can get them can you please let us know.
• Another thought was involving sweets in some way. So maybe hand out a few party bags/ hand sweets out at the door or just simply scatter them around the exhibition.

These are the pieces that we have confirmed! :)

Maxwell, Beth, Odette and Craig. :)

Posters

Beth: Just looking at ideas for posters and heres some existing ones I have found to take a look at and to take ideas from.

freak

[freek]

–noun

1.

any abnormal phenomenon or product or unusual object; anomaly; aberration.

2.

a person or animal on exhibition as an example of a strange deviation from nature; monster.

Props

Beth:  As for our idea with clown masks, I've searched the internet and not managed to find any good ones for less than about 7 quid which is a bit extreme considering how many we need..

..does anybody know of any fancy dress shops in Birmingham where they can check out the prices?

If not there are foam red noses on ebay for about 1.20 and we could use face paint, a little more budget but could work well if the face paints are good. Maybe even only half of us paint our face to make the idea easier.

As for stunts, if we're going to do any they need doing fast..can anybody think of anything.

I'm just going to look at ideas for posters and try and draw up some ideas, would appreciate thoughts or ideas to get the ball rolling.

Sweeney Todd Trailer

As a group we are looking at the Victorian era and our theme is 'Freak Show'. I would like you to have a look at Tim Burton's 'Sweeney Todd' for reference. Try and watch the whole film . It might spark off some ideas. For the layout/display.
I was thinking of dark stripped fabric or paper to cover the white walls. Which can be bought cheap from the rag market, if we all contribute a pound.
Balloons, party poppers, silly string etc.
Emily, max, charlie and myself spoke about our ideas today at the meet up session.
(Which are on Thursdays after the first lecture.)
We spoke about different aspects such as effect.
How we want people to feel when they walk into the exhibition, as if there entering a weird, surreal, quirky world. With dark, twisted jazz or classical music playing. The sort found in Sweeney Todd. Charlie has some classical music she is going to look at to fit the theme which will help to set the atmosphere.

Emma Starkey

Meeting notes.

Beth: The notes from the meeting last week and some decisions made.

Just a photographer to check out - Ash

http://trendland.net/2008/12/20/lyndon-wade-photography/# Lyndon Wade.
Have we included any photographers so far?

How Not To Curate

I have just read an article from the Art section of The Times, where the journalist revealed his opinion on the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy. He had high expectations of the show, as Britain has produced many brilliant sculptors over time. He left disappointed and confused; however, this was due to the poor curation of the works rather than the works themselves. He said that some exhibits seemed completely irrelevant or pointless, such as replicas of things which seemed to have been recreated at enormous expense, despite having little or no link to British sculpture. This waste of money became particularly apparent to him with the complete omission of work by important British artists such as Anish Kapoor and Anthony Gormley.

Part of the exhibition details how the British Museum showed exhibits plundered from other cultures and how this changed the course of British sculpture. However, with ancient artefacts placed among modern sculpture, the exhibition becomes confused. The journalist states that if it was a show based on the influence of Primitive cultures on modern sculpture then the result may have been successful. However, this was not what this exhibition was meant to be about.

Overall, I think the mistakes the curators made here was to go off subject in an attempt to seem clever and new, when it just ended up seeming confused and unsure of its own theme, even including non-British artists.
I think the lesson for us here is to not stray too far outside of our theme, to make sure the title of our exhibition is relevant to pretty much all the works we include, and to make sure it all pulls together coherently.

Emily

Ash (Previous post - Elephant Man)

I like the idea of setting it out like a house; Victorian style. This fits well with what I suggested about the elephant man. A travel back in time to when everything wasn't so clear set cleanly. Maybe an idea would be to lay out the exhibition in the normal Hollywood approach to horror and have everything seem like it has been untouched for centuries. I guess dusty and dishevelled - a failed gallery attempting to bring itself out of poverty. I'm not sure how this would be possible so any ideas that people have please post!
I agree with Emily on referencing Len Lye's exhibition. The way that some pieces were stored away in rooms meaning you had to explore the light in large and small areas. We can create light affects quite easily with low cost and so its definitely something we should concentrate on. http://feastbowl.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/a-flash-of-inspiration/ Interesting blog, especially the way she has recreated it using a bbq lid.