Next week sees the opening of the Nottingham Contemporary‘s 7th show. This one is going to be good. Very good!
I know because last week I had the privilege, with my office colleagues to be given a behind the scenes tour of the gallery as it prepared for the Huang Yong Ping and Wael Shawky show. Wael hadn’t arrived but Huang was at the gallery overseeing the installation of some huge peices of art – including a full size elephant, a minaret and a planes fuselage! “In your face” is an understatement!
What was really interesting was the logistics of how you put together these sort of shows. The Gallery had to take the doors off to get the elephant in (it’s in one piece!). It really is like putting a jigsaw together. Organised chaos. There’s an army of people behind the scenes assembling the work – according to the strict instructions of the artists. Each piece is mapped out and has it’s place pre-determined.
Walls are built and taken down. You wouldn’t know!
These pieces in this exhibition are going to look brilliant in the Gallery – and we are lucky to have them in Nottingham. Alex Farquharson was telling us that each show can take around 2 years to plan. Especially if the art comes from differnet places in the World.
If you have never been to the Contemporary – you should this time. If you have been before, I will be interested to know what you think!
We really enjoyed showing you round Tim. As you say a full sized US spy plane fuselage and a felled elephant are going to interest everyone. We’ve unpacked 300 bats this week too…”Backstage” it’s evident what our installation team have to achieve here on tight deadlines, in just about every technical discipline, including bat unpacking and wall building! Hopefully we are doing our bit for our city too – our audiences are 40% above target, we contibuted nearly £9m to the economy in our first year, and we generated £2.4m of positive press for Nottingham. It’s very cheering for all of our staff here to have such strong support from you and the team at Innes England. Thanks for coming. Look forward to seeing you again soon.
Lynn, it is fair to say that the office loved the visit – and I expect they will all come back to see the show! Thanks for your time – and that of Alex, Chloe and Jim. It was appreciated! Looking forward now to opening night!!
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