BOBA DOG!

Last Thursday was the opening of my exhibition in Milk Tea & Pearl, BOXPARK Shoreditch! The show is a selection of personal work based around the idea of being a 'mutt'. It was really nice to take a break from brief orientated work and do something very personal. 

I got the exhibition after I saw an advert on MTP's instagram, I sent them my portfolio and links to my social media. They offered me the space free of charge! Nung, the owner, is really keen for the cafes to have space for work - he knows how hard it is in London to promote yourself. 

Setting Up!

In the end I had a lot of monoprints and paintings to choose from, but I was only really satisfied with a few of them. I think by being selective I've forced myself to choose the strongest images. I did a panicked run to Paperchase on Wednesday morning, praying they'd have nice frames - they did! I considered painting them, but the neutral colour was really appealing and gave a nice uniformity to the pieces. 

I also decided to put everything on one side of the space, it's really quite a small area so I didn't want to cause disruption to the cafe. The idea is that people can look at them as they queue, it gets quite busy during lunchtime, lots of office workers running in for a pick-me-up. 

I was really happy with how the ceramics looked, they can be difficult to display just because of awkward sizes and angles. Having them low down on the bench really helped with displaying the plates. I also put my business cards here and my badges! (Inside the PUPMART bag!)

Private View

The private view was so much fun! I expected 20 people to turn up, but my final count made 55! It was a nice steady stream of visitors. I rather stupidly said we'd stay open until 11pm, just because I was pulling times out of my arse and BOXPARK closes at that time. There were still quite a few people around when I left, 9.30pm, but they were clearly there for the clubbing - I was shattered, my friends and family were giong, it was time for me to go too!

I think in the future it's best that private view times are a little narrower (5.30 - 11.00??? Why did I think I would be able to do that?) - 7.30pm - 11.00pm would have been more realistic.

To the right is a picture of the massive bag of FREE popcorn we were given! I never confirmed beer with the manager so in the end there was no free booze, but loads of free tea so nobody was too miffed about that! I gave out badges as well, a few people took photos of their ~merch~ and posted them Instagram.

These are some screenshots of my instagram profile, I'm very picky about how things look and try and upload in threes to keep a nice consistent feel. Then there are pictures I'm tagged in! The top three are all from the private view ~ Some people tag in comments instead of the photo, there's an example of a girl who picked up a badge! It's really great to see this online response, I didn't get to talk to everybody on the night - although I felt like I never stopped talking!  I spent the day after sending out thank yous to people and replying to comments. I can see why famous people hire assistants to do this, it's weirdly draining.

That's everything for now! I will make some smaller posts about how I made the dog bench and the ~marketing~ of the event.