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RHS – Chelsea Flower Show – Horticultural Research
Flower tent –
Gardens on show –
Sculptures –
Fruit & Veg –
Trees –
Ferns –
Water Features –
Researching Horticultural Therapy Courses
This blog post simply contains the online research that I have been doing recently surrounding horticultural therapy. Have a look through the links and watch some of the videos as collectively they fully explain what horticultural therapy is and what exactly it does.
This link will take you to The Therapy Garden.
– http://www.thetherapygarden.org/
This link will take you to Helmsley Walled Garden website.
– http://www.helmsleywalledgarden.org.uk/horticultural-therapy/
Below is a youtube video, which runs through the great properties of healing gardens and communities.
This link shows the Professional Development Diploma in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture, which is run in partnership with Coventry University, Thrive and Pershore College.
– http://www.thrive.org.uk/Files/Documents/Diploma%20Briefing%20Sheet%202012.pdf
This link is to the Grow Careers website.
– http://www.growcareers.info/SubjectArea/57266/arts-design/
Below is a youtube video of Musgrave Park’s therapy garden –
On December the 3rd, 1984 more than 27 tons of poisonous gas leaked for a storage tank at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal in India, causing many physical and metal health issues for the surround communities. This youtube video tells the story of how horticultural therapy can work at it’s very best. Please take the time to watch this video as it is very thought provoking.
Here is a link Wikipedia link to the Bhopal Disaster explaining exactly how it happened.
Researching MA Art Therapy
Having spent a great deal of time researching about Art Therapy as a career and the courses that are available for me I could write an awful lot of information on this one blog post. However, that would just be tedious and boring so here is a youtube video explaining what art therapy is and specifically what it does for it’s patience.
Here is a link to the home page of the British Assosiation of Art Therapists.
– http://www.baat.org/aboutbaat.html
What is art therapy? If you follow this link it will take you to a dedicated web page within the British Assosiation of Art Therapists website which will expand into great detail about what art therapy is.
– http://www.baat.org/art_therapy.html
This link shows all of the current postgraduate university courses that are running within the Uk. It is this page within the website that I have used to help me with sourcing a relevant course to apply to for next year.
Business Cards
In the past when I have visited professional exhibitions in London and other degree shows I have always picked up business cards of the artists work that I find the most interesting and in some cases I have made contact with them to ask a few questions about their work that interested me. Therefor I have decided to produce some business cards of my own for the degree show, as I want to create a professional stance with my work. Although this is a small add on aspect of the show I do feel that it truly finishes off all of the hard work that went into not only producing the exhibition but creating the final work too. To produce the business cards I used the online company moo.com here is the link – http://uk.moo.com/products/business-cards.html
Below is a screen shot of the seven business card images that I have used.
Here is the information and image that I have used on the back of my business cards.
Planning Of The Space
Here is my first (very rough) planning of the gallery space. With this first drawn up plan I was allocating spaces to my fellow students to see how the spacing would work out (roughly). It was at this point that I was worried about where to place the false walls, to increase space within the gallery, whilst still enabling the viewing space to flow freely rather than being blocked off.
This second gallery sketch was aided by the curator of the Lancaster Gallery – Sadie. Although this is a very simple sketch of the space it clearly shows the placing of people within the gallery. I also feel that through using the false walls and having them situated within the floor space (end on towards the windows), enables the greatest amount of natural light to enter the space, furthering the free flowing aspect of the gallery that all of us wanted to achieve. The boxed off corner on the left hand side also serves a purpose to conceal the graphic works from viewers, so if they wish to not witness the work they can move on to the other work within the exhibition. It’s other purpose is to block out some of the light from the windows so that the projection would be clearer.
Here is the final exhibition map which can be viewed on the digital, internet based degree show catalogue.
This is the website – http://www.rawfmt.co.uk/catalogue.html
Utilising The Gallery Space
Having looked around the gallery space both me and Mariya, decided to look into ways to utilise the space that we have secured for the degree show/exhibition.
Firstly we both decided that we need to somehow make use of the great expanse of window space. To make the space useable I looked into ways of hanging imagery in front of the widow panels. It was at this point that I did some extensive internet research and came across this website that has many diversely different ways of hanging imagery.
Having looked through the website (above) both me and Mariya (having also spoken to our tutor Paul Smith), decided that the vertical or horizontal wire method of hanging work would be the best alternative to wall space, if there ends up being a lack of space for everyone within the class.
Here is what the work would look similar too –
The other alternatives that we both thought up, were utilising the eight false walls within the galleys floor space. There are three different ways that we decided that we could have the false walls.
- Place two walls (that are 4 foot wide and 8 foot tall) together, creating a right angle, in all four corners of the gallery space, this would intern yield wall space on both the inside and outside of the false walls.
- Putting three walls corners/sides together, around one of the centre pillars to create a walled triangle space, thus intern concealing the ugly pillars. However this does not yield the greatest amount of wall space.
- pacing two walls parallel to each other (end on) with a 2 cm gap in-between the two pillars closest to the windows, and then another two false walls closer to the entrance door, parallel again. This would create a staggered effect when looking into the gallery space. Further more there would be another set of paralleled false walls a metre and a half away from the entrance door these would be front facing and would create a boxed off corner for the projection.
The Equipment List
Have produced an equipment list for all of the students a while ago, I found that the list regularly evolved at the same pace as the projects did. Thus I had to keep altering this equipment list.However this was the final one.
Here is a broken down version of what each student was expecting for the exhibition:-
- Daisy Ware Jarrett – 2 ipads ( this is for the catalogue, which Daisy is in control of)
- Kye Tidman – none
- Helen Kutchta – none
- Jenni Hearn – extra lighting possibly, (as of yet she is still not sure what sort of lighting)
- Oliver sharpe – One apple mac screen, plinths & headphones.
- Alex Wierzbicki – One apple mac screen & headphones.
- Mariya Mileva – none.
- Jack Somerset – plinth
- Genea Bailey – none
- Josie Sutton – none
- Ria Jones – plinth.
- Alex Nisbet – Projector, headphones, plinth & DVD player.
- Hazel Steel – none
- Sean Carrol – One apple mac screen, and head phones & plinth.
- Amber Nicholls – none
So an over view of the equipment that we would like to book out is:-
1x projectors
1x DVD player
3x iMacs (supplied from Media department)
2x iPads (also from Media department)
8x headphones
8x plinths
Researching my role as the curator
Here is the definition of a curator –
A curator (from Latin: curare meaning “take care”) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., galley, museum, library or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material. The object of a traditional curator’s concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of digital objects and biocurators.
Here is a link to the website that I read through about curating and what it involves. –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator
I found the curator responsibilities part of the web page particularly interesting. Here is a some of the text surrounding the responsibilities. –
“In smaller organizations, a curator may have sole responsibility for the acquisition and care of objects. The curator will make decisions regarding what objects to take, oversee their potential and documentations, conduct research based on the collection and history that provides proper packaging of art for transportation, and share that research with the public and polymath community through exhibitions and publications. In very small volunteer-based museums, such as local historical societies, a curator may be the only paid staff member”.
“In larger institutions, the curator’s primary function is as a subject specialist, with the expectation that he or she will conduct original research on objects and guide the organization in its collecting. Such institutions can have multiple curators, each assigned to a specific collecting area (e.g. Curator of Ancient Art, Curator of Prints and Drawings, etc.) and often operating under the direction of a head curator. In such organizations, the physical care of the collection may be overseen by museum collections managers or museum conservators, and documentation and administrative matters (such as insurance and loans) are handled by a museum registrar”.
‘Reify’ Project – Explicit Version – 18+ ONLY
This project delves into the wonderful world of the abstract nude.
I have created it through scraping graphic frames via the internet and then used them to construct a large and by definition “formulaic” montage. These dense montages of frames are from a distance an attractive pattern but as Marcus Harveys work explores, on closer inspection there challenging nature confronts the viewer, setting up a tension between the accompanying set of images. These artifacts use a different vernacular. It is the beautified language of the large format full-frame toned fine print that captivates viewers, drawing them in, using beauty as a tool, seducing them, and leading them deeper into this conceptual paradox.
Upon looking back over the forked paths that I have ventured through, it is evident that the act of creating the artifacts through layering meaning upon them has enabled me to understand the importance and the power of the ‘artifact’ in it’s ‘self. Revisiting the beginning stages of this project facilitated the understanding of the evident research loop that flowed throughout the project, a research loop that culminates with artifacts that hold a powerful presence not only within the project but the viewers that are witnessing them.
To conclude the juxtaposition between the montage of frames and the accompanying artifacts has allowed me to manufacture a conceptual, metaphorical space for the viewers to explore and it is within this exploration that the viewers interact with the work.
They have further, ‘reified’ rather than resolved the ever-conceptual contradictions within this work.
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