Exhibiting at Feminism in London Conference (FiLiA) at Institute of Education

A very educational experience.  I was delighted to have my Self Portrait sampler selected by Desperate Artwives to be exhibited as part of this conference.  However it was a salutary learning experience about how to choose which organisations/venues for me to select as an artist. 

I was away for a few days immediately before the staging time.  So I dropped my artwork and mounts off with Amy Dignam, the Desperate Artwives lead.  The IoE venue is a brutalist building near Russell Square – probably listed(!) – and no damage to the walls was allowed.  No drilling holes, and no Sellotape on painted walls  This venue was certainly not ‘white box’ - but unadorned concrete.  I have come up with a great, simple way to display my work.  Foamboard cut slightly smaller than the samplers, attached with Command Strips (upmarket blutac that pulls off without bring paint with it). 

There was confusion between IoE, FiLiA, and Desperate Artwives about access for staging, which rooms were allocated to whom and who/what else the rooms had been booked out for, on the Friday prior to the Conference.

Amy and Kate were stuck on a failed train so were an hour late arriving.  Desperate Artwives were allocated a corridor, and a room for display.  These locations were not secure, either during the day or at night.  Then we discovered the staging time window was 5-6.30pm and the room allocated was booked for auditions 6.30-10pm.  We were thrown out of the room at 6.30 for the auditions.  One artist, who is very precise and whose artwork is very desirable, and portable(!) was anxious about security of her work and insisted her work be kept locked away at night.  The organisers were confident that because of the type of delegate to the conference, security was not an issue (I was not – we don’t know the delegates, no tickets were checked on entry, and anyone could have entered the building).  Expressed concerns led to the more portable work being staged in the allocated room, and the less portable on the brutalist concrete walls in the lobby outside.

I concluded that artwork in the feminist arena is often created to be attention seeking and message based and is consequently non-precious, to the point of being disposable.  If you want your work to be precious and cherished, maybe the venue needs to be gallery based or for high-level intellectual conferences (the artist who was anxious had had her work at a major medical conference where specialist researchers had studied, understood and recognised the quality of thought and skill in her work).

However, I enjoyed my Sunday afternoon there.  There were many issue-based artworks that expressed the nature of being woman – all different ways of being woman.  I think this may be one of my fields for exhibition.

I practiced using my camera and iphone to see which took better photos. Photos to follow.