Work Experience, The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery, 28- 31 August 2012

I have just finished a second week of work experience working with The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery, helping to organise the upcoming solo exhibition featuring the work of Reg Cartwright, who has successfully exhibited his work several times before with the gallery. His work values the traditions of British Modernism, working primarily with still life, using familiar objects such as jugs, plates and flowers 'as a pretext for examining complex spatial relationships. His paintings are less about the objects he paints and more about achieving a balanced and pleasing composition, attaining this by flattening perspective, omitting non- essential details and focusing on tone.'
Throughout the week (28st- 31st August) i helped to display all of his work in the gallery and seeing which pieces worked well side by side. Once the exhibition was initially displayed, i professionally photographed all of his paintings for the gallery's website and editted the website with information about the exhibition to inform the public. I really enjoyed this work placement as it has given me the chance to see the amount of work involved in putting an exhibition together, both physically as well as making sure the exhibition is well publicised. The exhibition is being shown from the 1st to 23rd September 2012.

http://www.cambridgegallery.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work Experience at The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery

This week i have been completing some work experience in Cambridge in the Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery. Its been a busy week so i thought i'd tell you a little about what i've been getting up to and the job roles i've undertaken throughout this time.
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

Work Experience

I will soon be finishing my first year of academic study at university, with a whole four months before i begin my second year at the end of September. During this time, i have acquired some work experience at The Cambridge Contemporary Art Gallery, which is down Trinity Street in Cambridge.

Im really looking forward to getting to know what it would be like to work in a gallery. I am working for two weeks in total, from the 18th June to the 22nd June, and also from the 28th August to the 31st August. These two weeks are 'change-over' weeks, where the work displayed in the gallery is taken down and new work is put up. Some of the tasks i will be expected to do in this time is take down the work, package it safely and carefully, store it, clean the gallery between the change-over and put up the new work making sure the work is displayed correctly and professionally. Other duties include labelling all the work (artist name, date, price) and making sure that is correct, helping to write and organise biographies for the artists exhibiting, and dealing with public enquiries.

I will be assisting in two change-overs. The first will be for a 'Mixed Summer Exhibition' and 'Cambridge Scenes', and the second will be 'Reg Cartwright: New Paintings'. I think it will be interesting for me to see the difference between putting an exhibition together for a group of artists and an exhibition for a solo show.

If you want to find out more information about the gallery, you can visit their website at: www.cambridgegallery.co.uk.