Steph Antoniades Illustration

As I had already printed my final piece (Print bureau was too busy and I didn’t want to risk not having my final piece printed) and only after spoken to Robin about his thoughts on the poster. He suggested that I add a small tag line to the poster, as an outsider who has never seen my work before wouldn’t really have a clue what the poster was about. 

My poster was inspired by some I’d seen on NASA, advertising space travel and the advancing possibilities.

Whenever we have a workshop surrounding a project I always try and think how I can incorporate it into my work.

My next source of inspiration was artist Mike Kelley’s Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, a piece he created in an attempt to mock traditional sculpture with its absurd use of material. The piece was created as a way to represent childhood memories and provoke emotions of nostalgia in a provocative, bizarre way.  In the same way I wanted my secret universe to evoke similar emotions of nostalgia and awe. 

Initially, my visit to the Science Museum in London for the Cosmonaut exhibition was as research towards my dissertation but I soon realised that the visuals could also be helpful as research towards the exhibition unit.  I was inspired by the drawings of Tsiolkovsky, a pioneering cosmonautical thinker. I was also inspired by a quote by Tsiolkovsky, “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” 

I was prodominantly inspired by Russell Crotty when deciding what I wanted my piece to be for the exhibition.  His suspended globes he created for his astronomical installations influenced me to create my own 3D suspended installations. 

Walking down Downing Street, I came across many empty shops which would have been ideal as an exhibition venue. 

I came across one which had no contact details on the front but decided to try my luck with the estate agents next door.  One of the agents, Jurgen, was extremely helpful with taking down my name and number and told me he would do all he could to try find contact details of the owner. 

A few weeks passed by but Jurgen had no luck. Neither did anyone else in the curating team it seemed.  I decided that the only way we were really going to find a venue was if I walked around Farnham and went into places and asked face to face whether the venue was available for the exhibition. 

Having entered places such as Farnham Library and Bishops Table Hotel, I was able to narrow my search down to three possible venues, including, Farnham Museum and Bush Hotel.

At this point we had yet to establish a budget and both Bush Hotel and Farnham Museum were asking for roughly £400-£500 each for the hire of their venue spaces. It was then that, on a whim, Alli and I decided to ask Simon, The Plough’s manager whether he’d be willing to allow us to have the pub as a venue for our exhibition. The space appeared to be perfect for the theme of our exhibition, ‘Secrets & Lies’, and also Simon had offered us the space free of charge.  Excited about the prospects, I decided to reach out to the course group on Facebook with my findings and set up a voting page where everyone could vote for the venue they wanted to exhibit in.  Unsurprisingly, The Plough won everyone’s vote, with the exception of a few who were worried about exhibiting in a pub. I urged everyone to go down to The Plough and have a look at the venue for themselves and hopefully that lessened their worries.

The lead up to the exhibition was extremely challenging as it was difficult to co-ordinate with everyone on the course, especially over the Easter break. We had established that the hand in for exhibition pieces would be the 4th of April, the day we came back from Easter. On this day, only 2 or 3 people were prepared for hand in. We then gave everyone untill the 8th of April as the absolute last day to hand in their work so that Phill and I could take everyones pieces home to store over the weekenf as we were starting to set up at the Plough on Sunday the 10th. By the 10th there were still 16 or so people who hadn’t handed in work which made it extremely difficult to share out space for all the pieces to be hung up. We then came to the frustrating decision to leave all the hanging of the pieces until the following day (one day before our private view) We worked from roughly 13:00 - 20:00 on the 11th setting up the exhibition.

Ultimately the exhibition turned out to be more of a success than everyone had expected and we were all extremely proud of the outcome. The private viewing was buzzing and everyone seemed to be enjoying the artwork in conjunction with the venue.

I decided that I wanted to challenge myself this unit in terms of confidence. Choosing to be part of the curating team was the first step as I knew that the people wanting to join this group would be the ones with strong personalities and leadership goals. I was not wrong.

I think it’s safe to say that this unit has been challenging for everyone in terms of working in groups for such a major cause.  It was clear from the start that a certain person or certain people were going to have to take authoritative positions within their groups to manage the work load, which was more challenging within the curating team as everyone was vying for that position. 

My initial idea for the exhibition piece was inspired by Miguel Chevalier’s Dear World... Your, Cambridge, where he projected immersive images of outer space phenomena on to King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, acompanying Stephen Hawking’s speech.

I planed to build a box, which could be entered. On the inside, I would have simulated a space walk on a planet I had discovered with projections of outer space on the walls. I would have liked it to also be an immersive experience with the addition of emotive music.

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