So our exhibit was to be created and presented to the public for them to come and explore the café from our point of view. It was a fun process to help build the exhibit, even though I felt some members of the group did more than others throughout the setting up and deciding where things were going to be placed but it was still great fun. Being trusted to go down to the warehouse to paint the platform on my own felt amazing and for a second I believed I could be an artist as I thought someone would be watching me making sure that I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t. It felt nice to be trusted. The setting up process involved going back down to the warehouse underground to collect the platform and various other items that we were allowed to borrow. It was really helpful of The Collection to allow us to use plinths and glass boxes to present our exhibit as it gave it a more professional feel and made it connect and relate more to what was inside the galleries in The Collection. Throughout the setting up process I was really excited with how it was turning out and how it began to look, this was good because a lot of what we wanted to do was dependant on how it worked out on the day. I was really nervous going to The Collection on the Saturday because I knew that it was either going to work or it was all just going to fail but it seems to start off well…
After we spent a few hours setting everything up I was more confident in our piece and was beginning to get really excited. Setting up the education room was fun as we did end up moving it from our original window into the one nearby as we felt like it framed us more and gave us more chances of people seeing us, which it did. In the education room we weren’t sure on how people would react to us if they noticed us. Just as we thought we were finished setting up it started to pour it down with rain, this wasn’t good because most of our piece was outside. However, it seemed to only affect our chalk board which we rewrote before we got into our positions ready to begin and agreed that if it started raining then we would battle through it.
It was amazing to be set up in the education room, not because this was a dry spot but because it allowed me to evaluate peoples reactions to what they were experiencing. It was nice to see how people were reacting to me and Holly being up there because some people would wave to us and as we were having a tea party it felt natural to wave back and smile at them. Some people looked at us confused and didn’t really understand what we were doing but yet we just carried on as we needed to. People weren’t sure what to make of the whole idea as it was bringing something that shouldn’t be there to the space, some people looked confused as their normally space had been took over and they couldn’t understand why.
After our performance ended, I had a lot of mixed feelings. I felt like it hadn’t come to a natural finish and that we should have carried on longer as I didn’t feel like it had properly run its full length of time, it just felt like when you’re watching a movie and it suddenly freezes and it hasn’t come to its correct end. I feel like some members of the group put everything into the performance whereas I personally feel like one member of the group didn’t and the problem is I don’t really understand why. I accept that it might have got boring repeating the same thing over and over for a few hours but we all knew what to expect when we agreed to do this project as a group. I just felt let down that this member didn’t seem to feel like it was an important project after we had come so far as a group and eventually developed an idea that we all accepted and liked for this one member to then put the effort in just made me disappointed. It was a downside to being up in the education room because I could also observe the flaws within our project and I tried not to let this interfere with my own performance even though sometimes I was getting frustrated.
Evaluating our project as a whole I think that we could have pushed it even further than we did, we could have created several different things for the public to observe and make it into more of a professional gallery, I think it is a shame that we came up with this idea so late on in the project as I didn’t feel that we had enough time to fully develop our idea. If I was to develop it I would make things look even more professional, as though it really had come from inside and was just an extension of The Collection. I would create more standalone items that the audience can come and explore and maybe include an interactive thing like you get inside the galleries so that it appeals not only to adults but also children as well.
Overall it has been a great experience to have been able to do as it gave me another insight into performance however I also feel like it hasn’t been very valuable to me personally.