Here is just a quick round up and summary of our July 2010 exhibition at the Gardens Gallery in Montpellier Park, Cheltenham.
Ready to Open to the Public
Any artist or group of artists local to Cheltenham can book the Gardens Gallery. Each exhibition slot is usually limited to one week, but at present it is already fully booked until the end of 2011, with bookings are already being taken for 2012. We have booked ourselves two future slots: the last week of October 2011; and the final week of July 2012.
The gallery itself is a former outdoor theatre, built at the turn of the 19thC - 20th C, since which time it has served as tennis club, table tennis club, and semi-derelict boarded up shed. In 2008, in conjunction with a grant to restore the Montpellier Park as a whole, the proscenium building (as it is grandly known) has been redesigned as a gallery space. It sits opposite the newly re-surfaced tennis courts, opposite to a repainted 1864 bandstand and immediately next to a children’s play park and café area. We found the atmosphere friendly and welcoming, and a very broad range of local people uses the park throughout the day (even the cool skateboarding youth is polite and biddable). In the 10am until 6pm period that we were open, there was no problem of security or unpleasantness at all of any kind, and visitors started to arrive immediately we opened the doors until about 6.00 or 6.30 when numbers tailed off for dinner.
A Bookbinding Demonstration by Rosie
The space available consists of a rectangular main room and two small circular carbuncles (possibly ‘towers’) attached on either wing. The whole is painted white and has a very useful and effective hanging system for paintings, which we found perfectly suited to purpose. There are sandwich boards to place at the park entrances and several FREE ART type signs which Velcro to the outside of the gallery. The former theatre doors open up the entire side of the building like the bow doors of a rowing club. Because of the wind and rain (it being July) we only had the first two doors open for our show. There are six movable white screens, which can be used to increase the hanging space, or to hide the more ugly features of the interior (kitchenette, burglar alarm, etc.)
Describing the Print-making Process
The slightly ill-placed kitchen has two sinks, a kettle, fridge and a few cupboards. If you need them, and we did, there are six plastic trestle tables and a rotating postcard rack which is so large that it is necessary to have a vast number of cards for them not to lost a bit silly, and lost-looking. A good tip for your exhibition is to bring a large throw or cloth to hide the ugly trestle tables, if you intend to use them. We also found that there are no chairs other then the ones behind the desk, so that for a week we spent most of our time on our feet.
On the walls we fitted 44 framed pictures of all sizes without things looking too crowded and without having to use the rolling white screens. Any more pictures than this would have begun to look overcrowded. We also used three floor-standing browsers (provided) for mounted prints and a further container of prints on the central table. We placed our books, prints, book-binding press and information sheets and catalogue on a table for people to pick up as they came in. Most of the day was spent in talking to the visitors, explaining our various pictures and themes, and in demonstrating the printing processes we employ. The information sheets were well received, and it helped to explain book-binding and printing with demonstrations throughout each day. By the end of the week, we were carving lino, printing and book-binding just as if we were at home in the studio. This approach seemed to work for us.
Explaining a Reduction-method linoprint of Durham
In summary, this was an excellent experience for us. So many interesting people came through the doors that we picked up hints, tips, contacts, references and ideas for projects at almost every guest. We sold around £1400.00 worth of original linocuts, hand-bound books, and postcards, and enjoyed ourselves very much indeed. It was an unexpected pleasure to deliver the framed prints to the purchasers in the Cheltenham area when the exhibition was over. Everyone we visited was very welcoming and interested, and it gives us more than usual pleasure to know that the pictures have gone to good homes.
