Last week we visited Newcastle to visit Side Gallery and The Baltic gallery as preparation for our degree show. The aim was to see how work was presented in an exhibition format and the various different methods in which the work was displayed.
Firstly we visited Side Gallery and we were met by Lee who works there. He's involved with the printing of work and curatorial decisions in regards to installing the exhibitions. He kindly gave us an insight into how the gallery works and the process in which they create the new exhibitions. It was really interesting hearing their thought process when it comes to sequencing the images and choices of scale for each image. Knowing the gallery space well they were able to place particular images in spaces where the viewers would be drawn to straight away. I was impressed with how Tessa Bunny's work was exhibited. The work was about a river in Indonesia and documenting the people and their daily lives on the river. The work was presented in a way that created a winding river with the images which i thought was a really interesting way of exhibiting that particular work.
After side gallery we headed over to The Baltic to see the exhibitions they had. We went to see the group show called 'Animalesque' which was a selection of art discussing the role in which humans have in the world. We saw a wide range of methods used to show the work from videos to sculptures and written word. I was most interested in Pierre Huyghe's work 'Human Mask'. This was a documentary video based in an abandoned Japanese restaurant which employed macaque monkeys as waiting staff. The restaurant was abandoned after a nuclear explosion due to a tsunami. The video documents the macaque monkey alone in the environment wearing a mask and wig which I believe to be in relation to relationship between the monkey and humans.