For the exhibition, Timeless Perspectives at the Eagle Works, Wolverhampton, we needed to complete some promotion on Instagram and other social media where possible.
During one of the exhibition planning sessions we selected the name for the Instagram profile as a group, this was @wlv5_timelessperspectives.
The WLV is a standard shorthand way of referring to the University Of Wolverhampton as per the @wlv_photo account. The 5 represents the fact that we are a collective of Level 5 students and the last part is the name of the exhibition.
https://www.instagram.com/wlv5_timelessperspectives
During the planning sessions we spent time assigning roles to group members and Ieva volunteered to take on the Instagram account admin, carefully creating an account and then feeding information into it to promote the exhibition and the artists involved.
It was used to promote the exhibition by sharing the poster and photographs of each of the photographers. Alongside the photos of the seven of us were statements, similar to the artists statement that would be on the wall of the exhibition, but I chose to tailor mine to better reflect the overall practice and also to slightly obscure my work that would be on display.
Artist’s Statement
That statement was posted as per the following:
Bob Griffiths
A Level 5, part-time student using digital and film photography to make images that I find intriguing. Street photography, architecture, documentary, artistic abstracts and experimental concepts all pique my vivid imagination. Large cities worldwide are the source for many of my images, as they are a world away from my sheltered and sleepy home town of Shrewsbury.
Hidden beauty in the “ugliness of normal” is my subdued protest against the perception of “pretty” by the increasingly vacuous reality tv and media. Death and decay are sources of beauty that I’m drawn to as they represent the finality of life and act as a memento-mori to remind us of our insignificance in the vast universe.
A 35-year career in engineering instils a yearning to understand how things work an integrate with the world. I document places, events, people, and buildings that might otherwise be forgotten in the future.
Photojournalism, video, and mixed media are also part of my portfolio, I share images on Instagram, maintain a blog and host a YouTube channel containing a diverse range of videos.
More detail can be found at
Blog/Journal: http://bobgriffiths.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bob_griffiths_photography
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bobgriffiths
I chose to reference my wider practice to see if it interested people enough to bring them to the exhibition but as you can see from the profile screenshot, there were only 33 people following that account at the time.
Media
During the Install I mounted my GoPro up in the ceiling to capture a timelapse of the process. Hopefully it would show the works being hung and the seven of us, along with Sylvia milling around being busy.
This video didn’t last very long as I had set it to 1 shot per minute so it goes by relatively quickly. I shared it though and tagged in the @wlv5_timelessperspectives account to encourage excitement about the upcoming exhibition.
During the Private View I hung the camera up again, with an increased frequency of shots, 1 every 15 seconds and hoped that this would capture people moving around in a smoother manner, also making the video resulting from it a little lengthier. Although when I got home to examine the results, there was only a single still image on the memory card. Somehow, when turning it on, I managed to change mode from Timelapse to Still. Doh.
I used the GoPro after the exhibition was open to do a walk through of the space, showing each of the works on display. I shared this with everyone in the group and on my Instagram feed but I thought it may have been a good call to publish it on the exhibition account. I’m not the kind of person though that will order people around and force them to do something, especially when three is enough stress on all of our shoulders at the present time, with hand in/submission being only a couple of days away.
Ieva also asked us for the installation photos of our work so she could post them on the Instagram feed, so I sent the following images but have not seen them appear on the story as of yet. If it was degree show time, I would be a bit more likely to encourage the Insta Admin to post more information and media, but this is level 5 and I don’t want to upset her.
Conclusion
With the benefit of hindsight I would be more helpful at providing content and asking for it to be published on the insta feed, instead of assuming that it would all end up on the feed. There are nine posts on there today, but I think it could have been many more ideally.
I would also be more mindful of the setting son the camera if I were to retry the timelapses. I have done them many times as you can see from the Young Enterprise Shropshire YouTube page that I was the admin and content creator for in the for three years.
The photos of the photographers for the profiles are a bit random also, and I wonder if we should have had an hour or two in the studio to create a set of portraits with a consistent look, feel and lighting setup. I would suggest this in the future and also include the less formal images too.
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