GRETA: Photo Exhibition

Yesterday was one of the best days of my life, not in the sense that it is the most meaningful or important, nor was it any kind of holiday. It was the day of the photo exhibition I had dedicated every hour of my time to for the last two weeks.

Just three days prior I was still calling for sponsorship desperately trying to find a way so the photographers didn’t have to fund their own prints. I was ecstatic with relief when a successful phone call was made, at this point Optus had already told me I was exceeding my usual call-time for the month. The donor/sponsor asked to remain anonymous, but with the $150 I ran off to Office Works and printed off 42 large photographs.

With the event starting at six pm being held at a café which was open during the day, we had to be strategic in setting up. Having already organised the timeframe for set-up/pack-down and drawing maps to know where the photographs would hang India (my helping-hand) and I went down to Industria at 4pm, where we had already stored bar supplies. Starting by disassembling the shop which also doubles as a clothing retail store, we moved all the hanging items up three stories to our office, and hid the rest in store rooms and fitting rooms. Virtually a moment after finishing that, Allira pulls in to the side alley with her DJ equipment and we show her where to set up.

At this point the bar-boy comes in and we get to setting up the exhibition, Stringing up yarn between shelving and pegging up the photographs and blurbs; as well as setting up the bar, which included a last minute change run to ANZ. It would have been 5:50pm by the time we finished, some may say we were calling it close, I considered it perfectly planned timing!

Nanna, Mum, and my Step-Dad all came along
 to see what had been keeping me so busy.

As I said in my last blog my theme and motivating word through the entire process was simple. As you can see from the photo’s the location had enough character to require very limited decorating.  With a facebook guest list only around 50 people on the day of the event (please note: this publication had been left stagnant for nearly half a year and many of it’s previous followers had lost interest) I was expecting half of that if I was lucky. Setting my sights low was almost beneficial in hindsight. I had not expected a large turn out, so when over the course of the night over 100 people filtered in and out of the café I was overjoyed!

The fruits of my labour.

We had the first event with Trish’s new venture White Rabbit a pop-up bar, which she felt was a fantastic starting point for it. Learning the ropes, and establishing exactly what would be required in the long run as it’s own business. We also held a People's Choice Award, where I approached every guest with a star-sticker to place on the blurb of their favourite artists. We announced the winner on Facebook today, and she will be getting her photographs mounted to hang up!

Just one post left.

Until then,

Imogen 

Curtin Bentley Campus