This Tuesday we had to go back to Eagle Works to take down the exhibition, repair the walls and make good the place so it would be ready to hand back to the Eagle Works team.
Shadows and Stairs
Before we got into the old Victoria House which now houses studios and project space I went for a walk with my camera and one of my coursemates, Noah. I just wanted to have a jaunt around the back end of the building as there were some interesting metal stairways and gantries as well as some good shadowplay on the walls. I made a few photos as we talked about the lessons we had learned over the course of the last few days.
Arrival
Once most people had arrived we entered with our tools and made a few photographs before we started stripping everything down. We could use these in our documentation or journals, as I will do in this post and the other posts around the exhibition.
I concentrated on my work first and retrieved the cardboard containers for the acrylic prints from the car, before carefully taking them off and storing them for the Shrewsbury Arts Trail, if they get accepted. Once these were in the cardboard packaging wrapped with fragile marked parcel tape, it was time to start on the pallet.
I used my adjustable spanner (monkey wrench) to undo the clamps on the side of the pallet that would hold the poles to the wood. With all six undone the poles were laid on the floor and the pallet stayed mounted firmly on the wall. The impact driver made swift work of the top two screws and the last one pulled the rawl plug out as I lowered the pallet to the floor.
Undoing the two screws from the Zine vending box I removed this too. Once everything was off the wall, I got busy with the filler and filled the five holes that I’d drilled during the install.
The pallet and poles were loaded into the car along with the box of acrylic prints and then I helped others take their work down, filled some holes and did some sanding and painting. Once we’d done this and had a good tidy up it was time to head home and get on with some essay and journal work.
Before we split up for the day I asked Brian, one of the coursemates from last year if he might be so kind as to take a photo of our group, which he did. Thanks mate. After this year ends for me, they’ll move on into Level 6 as. a class of five, with me working on the second half of my level 5 and Codey taking a year out with the birth of her nipper. it’ll be gutting to not be involved with their final year too much but I’ll keep in touch with them and find out all the goss on what they have to do for their last year, which should prepare me for my final two years on Level 6.
Left to Right: Michelle, Codey, Bethany, Noah, Bob, Emma, Ieva, Sylvia
Reflection
The deinstall was easy enough, but I noticed that at least one member of the team hadn’t considered how they were to transport the images back to their homes. They hadn’t collected any packing materials ahead of the day and took a risk by doing so. The works were expensive to produce and they were sold for a good price also but I would have been concerned about the transport. Hence why I kept my cardboard sleeves and packing along with the packing tape used to keep it all held firmly together.
We were all working together to deinstall the work and make good the walls and space and this was a useful team building exercise. Because I’d brought my tools along to the install and deinstall, such as spirit level, drills, impact driver, screws, filler, rawl plugs and tape measure etc I found that I was helping out som eof the others. Before I helped them I found out if it was something they’d one before, and if not I showed them the first time and let them get on with it. It’s a good way to learn.
I asked Sylvia if I’d perhaps overstepped the helping line and interfered too much and she said no, that I was helpful without doing it all for the people I helped. She said and the rest of the team said that they’d miss my help next year for their degree show but offered to contract me in for the work.
Everyone was happy from what I could tell, we all discussed what we had learned and took from the exhibition preparation, planning, install,invigilating,deinstall and writing it up.
Be First to Comment