Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery is based down Trinity Street, in the heart of Cambridge, within a row of other various galleries opposite Trinity College. The gallery holds different exhibitions every month, in which work can be viewed and bought as customers please. This week starting Monday 18th June to Friday 22nd June has been a changeover week which is where we swap over between an old exhibition and the new upcoming Summer Exhibition, dedicated to British Art and Craft. The summer months will be dedicated to a variety of artists in all mediums including printmaking, sculpture, crafts and all things British.
During my week my job roles have included receiving work from artists for the exhibition, which needed to be unpacked, compared and checked off on a corrisponding delivery note, labelled with information on the artist, the name of the work, the price and edition number etc and then displayed in a professional way in the gallery space.
I created some window displays for the gallery, which had to be eyecatching and draw people into the gallery from the street, using sculpture, pottery and canvas paintings. I displayed a number of different artists work including Denise Brown, Virginia Dowe, Margaret Gardiner, Virginia Graham, Sarah Hillman, Carrie Paxton, Will Shakspeare, Mychael Barratt, Glynn Thomas, Clare Caulfield, Scott Irvine, Charlotte Cornish, Paul Harvey and Kevan Hopson, which are all British contemporary artists, many working in sculpture and glass.
I learnt a lot about the gallery's main principles and the steps taken in the progression from having art work delivered to actually selling the pieces. I sold work to a number of customers, and found out more about how customers can pay for work over a set number of months using the 'Own Art' loan scheme http://www.ownart.org.uk/.
Other jobs included painted the walls white ready for the new exhibition, replenishing stock once other work has been sold and taken away, framing work, packing up work that has been sold ready for collection, and dealing with customer enquiries. I also spent some time in the sister gallery situated in Benet Street called Cambridge Contemporary Crafts, so i worked with many different people in the two seperate galleries. I will be having another week of work experience with them in August an i look forward to working with them again. I have really enjoyed my week and would recommend anyone to visit. You can visit their websites for more information on the exhibitions or for any of the artists i have mentioned:
http://www.cambridgegallery.co.uk/
http://www.cambridgecrafts.co.uk/
Ceramics by Virginia Graham
'Royal Albert Hall', Hand-painted screenprint by Clare Caulfield
'Nougat Bowl', Glassware by Will Shakspeare
'Black Tern', Black Marble sclupture by Paul Harvey
'Trinity Great Court', Etching by Glynn Thomas
Ceramics by Margaret Gardiner
