Exhibition Planning and Finance Lecture with Karin

Today we had a really interesting and thought provoking lecture with Karin about exhibition planning and finance and how she managed it for her own personal exhibition. It was especially interesting for me because before I started University I was interested in become a curator in a gallery, so the things she spoke about were relevant for my understanding of the subject and defined how passionate I was about it still.

Firstly, Karin spoke about her exhibition she produced of her own work at Manchester Photographic Gallery. Before this exhibition was brought together in 2011, she had a number of commissions and exhibitions within Manchester and surrounding areas. She had an exhibitions shortly after she graduated focussing on Manchester musicians and their portraits in 1998. She then had an exhibition at the People's History Museum on the homeless people of the area in 1999, followed by an exhibition looking at the history of mental health in 2002. It was interesting to look at her previous work and how she has developed to become the photographer she is now.

Her exhibition that was held at Manchester Photographic Gallery was titled "AAA Shaun Ryder and Friends" and looked at the portraits she had taken of Shaun Ryder throughout his career. They had a professional and photographic relationship after they met at a festival in the mid 1990s. There were three floors that Karin spoke about at the lecture, Black Grape, Ten Mancs and On Tour with Shaun. Each different floor featured other musical artists that Shaun had worked with and met.

Karin spoke about finance, and how she financed the exhibition out of her own pocket. She was offered the full cost of the exhibition to be covered by the gallery, but they got to chose the frames and mounting techniques that were going to be used. To get full control of the exhibition and how it looked, she decided to finance it herself by taking out a loan, and used a variety of sprayed metal frames, glass mounted images and traditionally mounted frames. In total, she spent £4,500 on the exhibition, including all the prints, frames and access all areas passes for the opening night. The gallery priced the images at 50% commission, and Kopparberg sponsored the event. This made me think about the logistics of exhibition organisation and how much effort and planning would be needed to organise an international festival like we are.

We then decided, in my group, to construct a map of how the international festival would look, and how much it would cost. We, naturally, had to do an estimate of how much it would cost for the opening night of the festival, excluding the hire of Grizedale Forest as there were no quotations to hire a large outdoor area. We can imagine the estimate would be much more because of this.

PRINTS - £3700

18X METAL FRAMES - £2700

11X GOLD FINISH - £900

9X ACRYLICS - £1350

FLYERS - £200

500X LAUNCH NIGHT PASSES - £500

INVITATIONS - £50

SPOTLIGHT HIRE - £250

GENERATOR HIRE - £500

CRANE HIRE FOR HANGING OF IMAGES - £100

INDUSTRIAL WIRE TO HANG IMAGES - £250

PROJECTOR - £100

ACTORS FOR CABIN - £100

DANCERS - £100

LANTERNS - £40

CANDLES - £100

These were based on the sheet Karin gave us with the pricing of the frames and prints she bought for her shoot, as well as personal knowledge of how much it costs to finance an exhibition. I have only had one exhibition and that was at Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington in 2011. It was an awful experience for me as it so badly organised on their part, however, I managed to pull through the stress and exhibit my 7 images. I had been put off until I got offered an exhibition this November in my local town! This lecture was especially helpful in gaining more knowledge about how much time and effort goes into planning something like this, and how I need to be prepared!