The making of an exhibition: part six

Four days to go, and we're back to our Neeta Madahar exhibition.

This post is a companion piece to last week's step-by-step look at the building of the Joanna Quinn exhibition. The process for Neeta Madahar has been much the same: paint the walls, bring up and lay out the artworks, hang everything up, apply graphics.

But. Because Gallery One is bigger than Gallery Two, there's much more scope for the Exhibition Organisers to actually design the exhibition layout, putting in new walls to create corners and cubbyholes and rooms and spaces. So unlike with the Joanna Quinn gallery, you can walk in on the builders actually rolling walls around...



... and taking all manner of sharp and heavy instruments to bits of wood and metal.







The holes above won't be visible in the final gallery. They're where the screens go that'll display Neeta's beautiful Solstice, two 24-minute time-lapses of 36,000 stills that track the Summer and Winter solstices. One wall will be Summer; the other will be Winter. And instead of builders inside that room, it'll be you, watching the video.

You're already familiar with the process of artworks being brought up, carefully laid out on the gallery floor, then studied for possible changes. Sharon Scarmazzo and Ruth Haycock brought the artworks out of their hiding place this time, then Sharon and Greg Hobson paced the floor making their final decisions about placement.







Like Animalism previously, this exhibition has made the most of the expanse of wall outside Gallery One. The gigantic letters pictured below might not be furry, but, believe me, they're just as impressive to stand in front of.



To finish off, here's a side-by-side comparison of how the rear of the Neeta exhibition looked two weeks ago, and how it looks now. Things happen fast around here.



That's it from this Making Of series for now -- I don't want to spoil the final touches here, when you can come and see them with your own eyes from Friday. While you wait for the grand opening, you can browse through all the Making Of articles here, or find out more about both the Joanna Quinn and Neeta Madahar exhibitions at our exhibitions page.

The making of an exhibition: part five -- the build

One week to go. Our two new exhibitions open Friday 16 October -- and over the last week or two, I've been in and out of Gallery One and Gallery Two, watching them transform from eerily echoing chambers of nothingness to beautifully laid-out exhibitions of art.

So here's my five-step guide to building a Joanna Quinn exhibition.

1. Paint

First job is to freshen up the walls and paint everything according to the exhibition plan (as seen in the first photo below). There's a splash of red in the Joanna Quinn gallery -- which you can see if you skip forward to the 'Laying Out' section. And if you're wondering what that note is on the second picture below, it's a message from Exhibition Organiser Martyn Lenton to someone called 'Triple D'. That's the name of the company doing the painting, not a nickname.







2. Bring up the artworks

Up until now, all Joanna's artworks have been safely stored in our Insight collection centre, following the condition checking process you read about the other day. Now, they emerge from their store -- the sketches, the drawings, the animation cels -- to be stacked on trollies by a team that includes two Exhibition Organisers, a Content Developer and even a Senior Exhibitions Organiser. This take places in our Kodak Gallery, hence the strange green railings and beach scene in the background. Bringing up the artworks is a delicate process, and much careful direction of trollies through lift doors ensues.



3. Lay the artworks out

With the artworks inside the gallery, Martyn Lenton and Michael Harvey place them on the floor according to their final positions on the walls. There are paper plans sellotaped up to show where everything goes -- you can see Designer Rob Derbyshire preparing one such plan below. This is Michael and Martyn's final opportunity to spot where things don't quite work and make changes to the layout. And sure enough, several of Joanna's sketches get swapped around at this stage.











4. Hang the artworks

By the time I came in on Monday, the hanging of the artworks had already been done, and the gallery was looking near-complete (albeit a bit gloomy -- the hanging of the lamps comes later). By now, our Joanna Quinn 'interactive' -- a hands-on presentation running on a PC inside a metallic stand -- had also been installed by Assistant Gallery Developer Sven Shaw: he's the man fiddling with wires below.





5. Apply the graphics

Two things here. First: apply the 'vinyl' graphics, which work very much like car window stickers -- peel off backing, stick onto wall. Of course, much more care needs to be taken with our stickers, to make sure they're straight and don't develop pesky air bubbles. The text-based titles (see the little "Archive" sticker in the photo below) are created by "a very expensive machine" which cuts the individual letters out of a plain red sheet.





The second job is the big graphics. We've got two in the Joanna Quinn gallery: the cuddly Charmin bear, and 'Flamenco Beryl' from Dreams And Desires: Family Ties. They're essentially giant posters that go up on the gallery walls like wallpaper. Apply glue with brush; lift and place (it's a two-man job); and then all that's left is the final satisfying task of smoothing everything down.



And that's as much as I've seen so far. Step six is hanging the artworks on loan from other institutions -- we have a Goya, two Lautrecs, two Gillrays and a Degat: all examples of art that has influenced Joanna's own style. More on that later.

Then comes step seven: adding the artwork captions, fixing the lights, cleaning up -- and then opening the doors to you.

There's a palpable buzz in the air now that we're only a week away from the grand opening. As the big day approaches, I'll have more updates for you (including the building of other exhibition, Neeta Madahar: Bradford Fellowship in Photography 2008-09). In the meantime, all the photos above, plus many more I couldn't squeeze in, are available as a set on our Flickr page.

The making of an exhibition: part four

Back to the upcoming Drawings That Move: The Art Of Joanna Quinn for a new instalment in our Making Of An Exhibition series.

This video, shot by our camera-wielding Media Developer Emma Shaw, lets you in on our condition checking process. It basically involves poring over the various drawings, sketches and animation cels we'll be exhibiting, and recording any imperfections -- but I'll stop there and let Exhibition Organiser Martyn Lenton explain things much more expertly in the video itself. You also get a sneak glimpse at some of the Joanna Quinn-related gems we'll have on display in October.

The making of an exhibition: part three

We're switching exhibitions for this part of our series on how events at the Museum blossom from concept to reality.

Our Gallery One exhibition starting 16 October is Neeta Madahar: Bradford Fellowship in Photography 2008-09, bringing you beautiful photography and dreamlike video from this extremely creative British artist. You can find out more from the video above -- our Curator of Photography Greg Hobson is in front of the camera this time, explaining some of the thinking behind the exhibition.

You also get to watch Neeta browsing photographs in our Print Store, and go behind-the-scenes on a shoot for her Madame Yevonde-inspired portrait series, 'Flora'.

More Making Of to come: yesterday I was down in Insight to see the condition check process for the prints, drawings and animation cels that make up the Joanna Quinn exhibition -- photos and hopefully video of that coming soon.

The making of an exhibition: part two

So earlier this week you saw a little of the work that's going into creating the graphics for our upcoming exhibition, Drawings That Move: The Art Of Joanna Quinn. Today, I've got some photos from the grand unboxing and unpacking procedure -- where the actual objects we'll be using in the gallery are ceremonially lifted from the boxes they arrived in.

Actually, I'm cheating a bit.

First, because as I write, the objects are still actually tucked away in their packaging. The pictures here are from a cursory initial check, prior to the actual full-on unboxing taking place later this month.

Second, because finding out what's in the boxes isn't that surprising -- after all, it was Museum staff (specifically Curator Of Cinematography Michael Harvey and Content Developer Dan Jackson) who travelled to Joanna's house in August to choose the objects and parcel them all up.

But we still got excited cutting open the boxes and unravelling the bubble wrap all the same.

Exhibition Organiser Martyn Lenton and one of Joanna's sketchbooks. We'll be exhibiting several of these in October, and scanning some of the pages for you to browse on the website.

Original sketches from Joanna's 1993 film, Britannia, a BAFTA-nominated satire of the British Empire.

Exhibitions Organiser Lucy Davison performs The Unwrapping Of The BAFTA. Joanna won this award for her short film The Wife Of Bath.

An actual real-life Emmy Award. The woman's wings represent art; the atom she's holding represents science; and it's a very heavy award (but not quite as heavy as the BAFTA, Lucy tells me). This is one of two Emmys that Joanna won for The Wife Of Bath.

The making of an exhibition: part one

If you've ever wanted to sneak into our offices, hide behind a potted plant, and spy on how we plan, develop and build one of our exhibitions -- it's your lucky day.

Starting today, I'll be bringing you a series of videos that take you behind the scenes of the making of Drawings That Move: The Art Of Joanna Quinn, one of two new National Media Museum exhibitions opening on October 16th. These little films build towards a longer making-of video that's being organised by our Cultural Events Organiser, Fozia Bano, and shown at the opening night party (and, eventually, on the web).

Just a quick film to start with: Rob Derbyshire, our Graphic Designer, takes delivery of the graphics we're using for the big titles in the gallery -- graphics hand-created by Joanna Quinn herself.

Much more to come: I'll show you the unboxing of some of the exhibits later this week, then things start getting really busy as the gallery floorplan is finalised, the opening night event takes shape, and we prepare for the flurry of activity that goes into dismantling the old exhibitions and constructing the new ones.