Time to visit the exhibition that the Level 5 Students have put on at the Mander Centre shopping mall after spending the day in the uni catching up with some tutorials and work.
At around 6pm it was time to head into the community hub in the Mander Centre to see how this years level 5 students have done. The exhibition is titled “The Matter Of The Black Country II” after the original was held at Centrala in Digbeth last year. These students though are halfway through their second year and for many it will be their first time exhibiting their work.
Arriving at the gallery there was a superb group of people already in there celebrating the opening of the exhibition and the hanging work to get the work on the walls was impressive. The walls all being a lovely clean white and the images printed in large format in a pretty uniform alignment around the room. There was little space around the room and yet the images were not cramped together.
There were many portraits on display around the room, some in black and white and others in colour. Some were isolated from a background and others featured in locations around the Black Country.
More in my wheelhouse were some photographs of the internals of a deserted building showing the dilapidation and degradation of an abandoned location.
The photos by Rebecca Aldridge are a great example of a forgotten place with the lack of bright colours and the muted tones are lovely and the composition is really pleasing to my eyes. The birds in the door frame and window sill are also a wonderful capture and must have been tricky trying to get the photo without disturbing them.
There were a group of family, friends, students and university staff in the room all taking the time to look around at the photos on the walls whilst imbibing some drinks and snacks. It was nice talking to the level 5 students who are exhibiting here and learning about how they made their photos and why they have created them the way they have.
I was talking also to a grandfather of one of the students whom I used to work with many years ago, before he left to retire. He is also a photographer and obviously has been a great resource for his grandson, who had produced a few portraits that were also produced very well and had some wonderful lighting.
Tom Hicks, a librarian from the university and the brains behind Black Country Type, and I had a chat about his exhibition at Cambridge, Churchill College and then about som eof his upcoming projects. Im excited about seeing what these turn out like!
The location of the exhibition in the Mander Centre is a great opportunity to get the footfall walking past in the shopping mall. The walls were all bright and spaced well with a clean atmosphere and I was impressed by the show.
It was refreshing and also reassuring that these are the people that I will be spending mine and their final year together and putting on the degree show. Hopefully they’ll adopt me as part of their crew and my practice might fit in with the rest of the work they produce over the next year. I’m looking forward to it immensley.
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