Call 2: A Publication - Report

I have enjoyed the challenge of translating an element of my studio practice into this medium, and I feel for me, having it published and preserved this way has crystallised a part of my work at a key stage in its evolvement. Had this project been set at another time, I feel that my submission would have been a very different piece of work, and I would have liked to, had we had the time, have been able to consider more deeply how it’s possible to bring a wider visual communication of my work into this restrictive format. The book as a thing intrigues me, and this is a challenge that I intend to consider more thoroughly at an appropriate time. The unfortunate (but pleasantly challenging) reality of these short projects is that you have to be quick, you have to make something; there really isn’t time to ponder it or allow your work to develop and mutate as it would in the studio.

The issues with the book, namely the problem with the centre page, and bottom section of people’s work being cut off, and the issue with the quality of the A3 prints (which people have paid for), are all problems that couldn’t be fixed because of the extremely tight timeframe – obviously it was unavoidable in this instance because of the way the course has been written, but this has undeniably caused these issues. I would never want to organise a project this way, and I definitely would not respond to a call with such a tight schedule, or certainly not for a project of this nature.

I was, and still am unsure of the role of the publicity team. I think they put together a very useful and comprehensive website in plenty of time, but that was the only piece of publicity that I saw as I don’t have a Facebook (as many people don’t), and I do wonder how many people actually saw this website. Even as a member of the college, if I didn’t know it was happening, I wouldn’t have known it was happening. College email was only sent out the day before the launch. There was also been no mention either to us, or to the public/college of where the book will be available to purchase after the opening event, which I think it a vital piece of information.
It may have also been a good idea to have either a separate, or the same team working on the organisation of the opening event, as leading up to, and on the day, I was unsure of my role (or if I had one). There was a lot to do on the opening day that could have been taken care of in advance – e.g. food + drinks, printing legends, planning how the book was going to be sold, and a rota in advance for who would have to do this – I think the rota was a good idea.

I realise that a lot of these feelings probably reflect those of people not on the Curatorial team during Call 1. In terms of the curatorial module, it’s certainly a less valuable position not to be on any kind of team. The praxis element, particularly in Call 2, is so small, that without also working on curating/publicity, it’s difficult to take that much from the project. Obviously there was the task and consideration of how to translate your work into a publication format, but this has not been the focus of the project. Once completing this, I personally felt uninvolved (which wasn’t necessarily an issue, because it gave me the opportunity to work on my contextual studies), but it made for a very different experience to Call 1.

It’s not been an unpleasant experience working on the publication. It’s not really been an experience at all, as I don’t feel as though I’ve learnt very much except that I would never willingly put myself forward to be involved in a project that had so little time to execute it well – but I realised this while working on Call 1. It was disappointing how little involvement (none) any of us – including the publicity team – had in the actual production of the book. On the day of the launch, after it was requested, we were given a brief overview of the process, however as the book can be a vital form of communication or presentation for an artist, it would have been appreciated if this has been more the focus of this task- especially as each call is supposed to be directed at familiarising us with different methods of presenting our practices.

In terms of how I felt my work was represented in book form; the printing made my work a great deal greener - the colours to me are sort of ‘swampy’. I was aware that digital printing can and will alter colours, but after hearing about what a great job they’d done, opening up and seeing my work in green came as a bit of a surprise, and obviously if I’d known this would happen (Again a time issue, but if we’d had access to the dummy), then I could have countered this digitally, and the print would have been truer to my piece; this is only a little problem though. There is also the issue of having several mms cut from the bottom of the image – not as obvious with my piece as with some others, but I can see it’s there – despite them all being sized as specified.



Although the issues with my work have been relatively minor – my A3 print isn’t too bad, and my page in the publication could be worse – I understand that there are some people whose pieces have been seriously compromised, which is very disappointing, as for this brief we were required to hand the responsibility of how our work was to be rendered over to someone else. It's unfortunate that generally this project seemed to be dealt with hastily and artists' work handled insensitively, which is apparent in the final result.
That being said, however, we have all been given the opportunity to be published, and our work was celebrated at an off campus launch; a pleasant way to draw call 2 to a close.