I visited Jerwood Gallery in Hastings before the pandemic began. We saw an exhibition called 'The Quick and The Dead' that contained portraits made in all different kinds of ways, some were paintings and some were sculptures. One of the portraits was even made from a toilet that was hanging from the ceiling! This portrait was by Sarah Lucas of her friend Maggi Hambling. I thought the toilet was hilarious! The artists were called: Hambling – Horsley – Lucas – Simmons – Teller I didn't know that portraits could look so different, and that they might not look like the person much at all. Some people used paints, others drawings. |
Since we last visited the Jerwood Gallery, it has changed its name to Hastings Contemporary. Even though the gallery is closed right now to the public, a member of staff at Hastings Contemporary (called Suzy) agreed to answer our questions about the gallery by email. We asked her:
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Suzy's answers
- Hastings Contemporary exhibits modern and contemporary art – mainly painting. ‘Modern Art’ refers to art from the later 1800s (19th century) to about the 1960s. ‘Contemporary Art’ refers to art from about the 1960s to the present day. You already know that many artists work in media and materials other than painting – Hastings Contemporary has displayed sculptures, installations, textile art, ceramics and even a sauna, but our main focus is painting (and also drawing). I say: wow - a sauna! I visited one of those in Finland. I wonder what an installation is? My Mum just showed me some pictures of Yayoi Kusama's installations - cool and whacky!
- My job is to support my colleague Rowan, the Visitor Services Manager, and I am Membership Coordinator. Hastings Contemporary has almost 2000 members and I look after all the filing, letters, sending out membership cards, and keeping track of memberships. I do this in the office and it mainly involves working on my computer. I encourage new people to join as members and existing members to renew their memberships. I also do general administration jobs to help other members of the team, such as ordering stationery, and very importantly ordering tea, coffee, biscuits etc for staff and volunteers! When the gallery is open I also work at the front desk as part of the Front of House team, welcoming visitors, taking payments, and selling items in the shop. I also take turns invigilating the galleries (standing in the galleries keeping the artwork safe and answering visitors’ questions) and checking that the toilets have soap, loo roll, etc. I help keep the shop tidy and make a note of anything that we need to reorder. At the end of the day we count the money in the till and make sure it adds up correctly. Since the beginning of the pandemic last year we have gone from seven full-time members of staff to three full-time and one part-time member of staff. At the moment, Rowan and I are only working three days a week and on furlough two days, so we are currently working part-time as well. Rowan and I are doing lots of things that we didn’t used to do as part of our main jobs. For example, as we don’t have a curator, I am checking artwork when it goes in and out of the building. I say: I wonder how they make money? Mum says it's a mixture of membership fees, shop sales, people paying on the door to see the artwork and, because they're a charity, grants. I wonder what their favourite biscuit is?
- It depends what’s in the exhibition! Usually a week to two weeks. Bear in mind that the first thing to do is to take down the previous exhibition. All the works have to be wrapped in the same packaging they arrived in before they are sent away. Sometimes one lorry will bring one lot of work and then take away another lot, sometimes we have several transport companies collecting and delivering artwork. It also depends who is lending the work (for example we might have 100 works all from the same lender coming from the same place, or it might be five works but from different galleries around the country), the size of the work, and sometimes extra conditions put on the lending. Some galleries send a courier with a work to make sure it is looked after and hung properly and that can take a lot of extra time. It also depends on how long it takes to decide where and how the work will be displayed, and how difficult that is to do (for example if a work is very heavy it might have to be on the ground floor). Hanging an exhibition involves the Director of Operations, the Curator, Director, and a team of technicians and is a busy time no matter what! It is a bit like an enormous game of Tetris at times but it is always very exciting to see a new exhibition going up. I say: it sounds busy and hectic!
- Some exhibitions are planned 2-3 years in advance and might have been thought of before that. Others can happen quite quickly. In an ideal world our exhibition programme would be planned out about two years in advance … but it doesn’t always work like that here. That can be a good thing because we can be flexible about what we do, but it can be scary. I say: wow, it seems crazy to plan things 2-3 years in advance! That seems such a long time to me because I'm 10. That means right now they might be planning for 2024 and things that are in the gallery at this minute might have been worked on in 2019.
After hearing how much the pandemic has affected the work of art galleries, I decided to visit some work online. I chose the outdoor installation at Tate Britain by CHILA KUMARI SINGH BURMAN. I thought it was cool that the artist made the work on the outside of the building so that it was safe for people to see it during the Pandemic. The installation is inspired by the artist's childhood visits to Blackpool Illuminations and her family's ice cream van! |