The Space Between Us degree show exhibition was curated in an online form, embodying artistic outcomes from current time. With the every changing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, creativity and artworks were able to metamorphosize into a brand-new virtual form. The exhibition primarily celebrates the artists and their achievements but also the connection that we feel across the world through this united experience of living. But how can we all connect through this without being physically together?
With these social and physical restrictions on everyone’s daily lives there came an increased demand for connectivity so as to cure the public's feelings of isolation in this time. With the digital age that we are currently in it seemed that everyone’s first port of call to address this was to flock to the internet… and the internet answered back. Within a few days of lockdown, I found my own personal social media was flooded with live shows and daily updates of what people’s individual experiences were with the public taking a genuine interest in this content. We as a marketing team recognized a high demand for this form of posting and wanted to create such events that would reduce the space between the artists and their audience. Therefore we came together as a team to form a variety of events in the lead up to exhibition that would build our audience safely behind a screen yet with the connective feeling of being closer to the artists than 2 metre distance.
Thus, I curated and organised one of our social media events, Artist Takeover Days, which was hosted on our exhibitions Instagram account story [@thespacebetweenus2020]. The event took place across 6 weeks, showing a new exhibiting artist working day twice weekly. Inspired by Grayson Perry’s Art Club and Tate Shots, the event was set up around revealing an almost backstage view of the exhibition and how the artists are making their work within the homes. The artists were each instructed to create content for the Instagram story introducing themselves and their work to our exhibition followers. The artists posted across a 9 to 5 time frame
so that followers may view the artist day in real time and see how their working day compares to their own. I gave the artist few guidelines on how they must present their day other than keeping it focused on their artwork and what they were working on for the then upcoming exhibition. Each artist was given free rein to create the type of content that they wanted to use to represent their individual artistic brand. This created a unique form of the event each time using varied medias such as images, videos, boomerangs, text, performances, talking to the camera and so on. Each Artist Takeover Day was archived on our accounts Instagram page acting as a channel hub for viewers to catch up on any days they missed.
This event also provided direct contact between the artists and the audience, opening up discussion on their work in an online forum instead. This type of interaction was just as important to provide to the public as it was to provide to our exhibiting artists. Part of celebrating the artists achievements is being able to enter into critical discussion with audience members on the decisions behind their work and experimentation. The Artist Takeover Days and other marketing events invited this type of discussion which aided our exhibition interest and our artists practice development. It is this type of positive online connectivity that was so helpful to our artists whilst they created an entirely new form of degree show under lockdown.
Although we all miss in person events, under different circumstances creating Artist Takeover Days may not have been possible. Ordinarily all our exhibiting artists would have been producing their work under the same roof in the University of Lincoln Fine Art studios. To produce this event is this space would have quickly become repetitive, with similar outputs and ways of showing the space being used. However, the revealing of the artists creativity around their brand-new home studio working meant that not only could viewers see their unique practice but could understand how our artists were adapting to their new environments. This developed into becoming an invaluable tool for our artists as well as the public, who would normally be working side by side in the studio assisting each other’s practice. Instead this was able to be done virtually with artists such as Olivia Eaglefield providing hints and tips on how to film a performance in your bedroom (Eaglesfield’s Artist Takeover Day can be viewed in AT DAYS #1 highlights on our Instagram page). Another exhibiting artist that featured in the Artist Takeover Day events was installation artist Fern Horton. On the experience of revealing her process in this way Horton says she “found this to be an exciting opportunity to bring my home studio space to the masses and share my development work. I also found it inspiring to see how my peers chose to use their takeover days and this in turn inspired my own” (Hortons Artist Takeover Day can be viewed in AT DAYS 2# highlights on our Instagram page).
The Artist Takeover Days was a successful marketing event which generated much intrigue into the artists and the degree show. This event and others were proven to be successful by the huge numbers that attended the opening night of our exhibition, which hosted over 300 people. This therefore proves that whilst our artists and audience were all separated across the country, it is this unpredictable turn of events that has provided an opportunity to come together in a different way. These online events and our exhibition went towards one small way of limiting the space between us, creating a new way of connecting for this contemporary digital age.
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