Work Placement
DAY 1: I have just completed day one of my six day work placement at Purdy Hicks Gallery in London, and I must admit, it has most definitely been an interesting one. I arrived promptly at 11am, getting off the tube at Southwark Station and was happy to find that the gallery itself was only 5 minutes walk away from the tube stop. After being shown around the gallery itself, which currently has the work of Finnish photographer Santeri Tuori up on display in the main gallery, and a combination of Susan Derges and a couple of paintings down in the basement, I was then put in charge of pricing up domain names for Susan Derges, which would enable to gallery it
self to come up higher in a google search of "Susan Derges". By then it was time to head over to Hampstead Heath to personally deliver a photograph by Anni Leppala to a buyer. By this point the rain was getting rather heavy, and my shoes were far from inadequate, which was not the most pleasant. Once returning to the gallery with rather wet feet but nicely full from a fully paid for lunch in Hampstead, the collection of photography books and journals had to be reorganised, before I was sent off to Farringdon to pick up a Susan Derges print from Metro Imaging Ltd ready to be framed tomorrow morning. It's been a busy day! 5 more days to go, and I must admit, if this is what's out there for me past graduation, I am fully okay with this.
DAY 2: Day two wasn't quite as interesting as day one, unfortunately, but this is most likely due to the fact that I wasn't travelling all over London - it's far less interesting staying in one place! Being a two minute walk away from the Tate Modern, meant that I could visit the Tate before work, as an 11am start is hardly strenuous, so getting up a little earlier to be in the Tate at opening time was fine. Once I had got to work, it was my responsibility to buy all the domain names for Susan Derges that the gallery's "computer guy" had recommended - susanderges.info, .org.uk and a couple of others, which would result in the gallery coming higher up on google when someone searched for Susan Derges. I had to create an account with godaddy.com which is the website that I had previously recommended from personal experience, and purchase the names using the gallery card. Setting up a Pinterest account was the next step on the to do list.It was important to make sure we weren't just using pinterest in the same way as the website, and I had to make sure that the images displayed were of an interesting angle, showing a variety of different works as well as portraits of the artists that we created boards of. It was also important to pin work from other users of Pinterest, in order to get us recognised. The dimensions and the type of print was displayed in the description, and the only actual prints of work that we used were images that hadn't been sold yet. In the afternoon I did a lot of wrapping of work that was ready to be sent off to buyers, as well as drinking many cups of tea I had been offered. DAY 3: Day three consisted mainly of putting addresses on the invitations to the next preview night and general exhibition (painter Alturo Di Stefano) - these addresses were for people all over the country, including Tom Hunter, Bettina Von Zwehl, Susan Derges, Eliza Bonham-Carter and several Earls, Lords and Ladies. Several cheques also had to be written. After work I walked to the tube station with one of the sculpturers Maria, who the gallery represent. Maria has a studio in the V&A, and is currently working on a project ready to be exhibited in May. DAYS 4, 5 & 6: The last 2 and a half days were fairly similar to the other days, more wrapping had to be done, more invitation stuff to do, adding people's emails on to the subscriptions to the newsletters online, and clearing out the cupboards full of old leaflets and various books from a huge collection of painters and photographers. On the Friday evening, tea and cake was to be had with the other staff members after all our hard work, and I got a huge thank you for my hard work, and I got ttold that I must visit lots. There is also a possibility that I could work back there in the summer if they need an extra hand. Overall it's been a success!