Upon finishing my experiments, the next part of the process was organising the exhibition space.
I began by emailing the operations manager Paula Mcnulty to hire out the X Gallery space. I chose this gallery space, as it was within the John Lennon Art and Design Building, and therefore it did not require as much documentation or verification to acquire the space, as I am a student. This became extremely valuable based on the short time constraints that I had.
Another reason, was the size of the room. I found that as I did not have many art pieces to show, I wanted my artworks to fill the room, but also provide another space to move around.
The other spaces as an option was the Exhibition Research Lab and within the Foyer. I found the Foyer to be too open within the reception area and would not have enough wall space for projectors, due to the large-scale windows.
I found the Exhibition Research Lab was slightly too big for my works, and would make the space appear too sparse.
Once committing to the exhibition space, I had to ensure there was availability, with the operations manager and other lecturers that use the space. Due to COVID and the period of the summer months, there were not many students within the building and using the space. This allowed me to be flexible with my time and days to exhibit.
I decided the exhibition to be Friday the 13th, as it was the last week before my assignments were due, the following week. I also chose to have a separate day to set up my art pieces.
After discussing this with Mark Roughley, he advised me to either reserve the entire week, or at least an extra day, to allow for further install time. This was a key element to consider in event planning, ensuring that I gave myself sufficient time to set up and allow delays.
Once organising the days and the space, I returned back to my experiments, and came to realise that I wanted an element of audio, to act as a guide and context to my exhibition. Based on a lecture I had with Dr Sam Illingworth, I became to consider the role of poetry as a tool for science communication.
As a beginner to poetry, I first considered the list method, in which I would write words associated with the theme of my exhibition and my Glioblastoma. I found this particularly helpful in sparking particular points to highlight.
I also researched some poems relating to cancer, disease and grieving to look at certain poetry styles and tones.
When writing my poem, I wanted to create an empathetic tone based on my personal experience of my mum with Glioblastoma. I wanted to convey my feelings and thoughts over the diagnosis and her symptoms. I made references to symptoms such as epilepsy, paralysis and expressive aphasia, in which an individual can understand what people say, but not able to speak themselves.
Other references I explore is the process of angiogenesis, in which blood vessels feed a tumours growth, causing it to invade healthy tissue through its dendrites, in a patterning similar to plant roots.
As well as including medical references, I also wanted to communicate how my mum felt in her own words. She would say to me how it felt like there were magnets pulling on her brain, causing her to lose balance and be pulled to one side.
I felt like this analogy would speak a lot to people with brain tumour, as the feeling of pressure build up in the mind.
As well as communicating my mothers’ illness, I wanted to also communicate how strange it felt to have my mother ill, as I too am familiar with ambulances, operations and hospital visits due to my heart condition.
Glioblastoma Poem: The weed in your brain
From developing this poem, I also needed to record it and put it along with my time lapse and endoscope video.