Bankley Gallery exhibition preparations

,I've finished putting together all the black and white squares (as detailed in this previous entry:  http://garth-simmons.blogspot.com/2011/02/scatterings.html) and still have quite a long way to go with my preparations for my exhibition in July at the Bankley Gallery in Levenshulme.

Preparations going very well - it's my first solo exhibition and I have an awful lot of space to cover and my ideas of how to cover that space develop more and more as the days and months move closer and closer to the date in question.  At first I was going to cover the walls and floor with this texture:

Which is hundreds of my photocopies of my collages stuck together.  Receding off into the distance.  So with 94 squares of black and white texture I can actually cover more than just a small area but also most of the room.

As the monotonous task of sticking massive squares of paper developed so did my ideas - I've also been putting together all my coloured paper - which can be interspersed into the mix to break up the monotony and to fill the gaps.  

So when I get to the place I can cut these big areas of texture and colour and intersperse them.  I'm not entirely sure how yet.  I was thinking that perhaps they should tell some form of story which would run incohesively, abstractly and non linear all over the walls and floors of the gallery intersecting into connective points and drawing themselves into subtle illustrations hidden in the overcomplicated mess.  That the visitors would be given a guidebook each that would explain what was going on - probably in a similar non linear, abstract and incohesive method.  

These are all ideas I have to develop.  I've been keeping a little notebook where I've been adding and developing ideas as they've come to me - it's been about for a few months now.... The best way to approach this massive project is not to design it completely (then it would be too perfect and I want it to have an element of autonomy) but to spend my five days before the exhibition working 9 to 5 putting up the prepared textures and colours into whatever compositional and narrative order feels right at the time. 

Below are some of the pages from my notebook which has a few "designs" or visualisations of my ideas for the space:

The preview of the exhibition will be on Friday 1 July 2011 in the evening (not sure of the time yet) and I'm planning this rather far in advance but then it's not as long away as you may think especially when there's so many things to prepare.  Also the great thing about preparing so many materials is that I they can be reused afterwards - and I do have a very good idea for afterwards too - which you may or may not be able to discern from the notebook drawings above.

As well as putting together more and more textures, stories and ideas to weave through this rather large scale piece I've a few other projects going on the next few months - I do need to do little small scale things too as I so hate not getting at least one creative act completely finished every month.  

(Next months creative act and a continuation of exhibition preparations can be found here:  http://garth-simmons.blogspot.com/2011/04/always-condensing-my-drifting-elements.html)