WORD COUNT:  1193

Working as a part of a small group in organising both SIGNAL and RMIT exhibitions, my overall technical proficiency and professional art practice were enriched in three key ways.

Firstly, through my close collaboration with Rose during SIGNAL’s graphic design and copywriting development, I was able to gain a deeper understanding and application of the principle of effective branding and public communication practices. Despite an arguably industry wide aversion to recognising the necessity of branding and advertising, the efficacy of marketing exhibitions and individual artworks is significantly dependent on the aesthetic abilities of practitioners to communicate these ideas to the wider public in a way which is equally accessible as it is respectful of artists’ philosophies.

Consequently, in liaising back and forth with Rose to reedit my copywriting to be more succinct, evocative, and suitable for various publishing mediums, I was challenged refine my writing beyond the familiar scope of individual expression. For example, as my writing would be the overarching descriptor for our project brief, it had to retain a degree of generalised thematic applicability whilst simultaneously being visceral enough to encapsulate some of the conceptual approaches adopted by eighteen different individuals. While contributing copy to group work is not a new concept to me, publishing it to the online and public spheres as a written representation of eighteen peers is.

Hence, recognising the broadened scope of this task, I was able to more acutely practice and refine my writing with a meta critical gaze that I’ve not always held previously- due to either negligence or lack of a moderating public gaze. As such, this exercise in communication was thoroughly informative in bringing to the forefront my academic ability to mitigate individual concerns with unifying and curating others’ work, a recognition that is fundamental to my future professional practice as an artist and interdisciplinary collaborator.

In addition to this, by working with a small group of 4 other individuals for a sustained period of roughly a month, I was able to develop and nuance my collaborative practice. Group work, delegation of tasks, online communication, and time management skills are all cornerstones of university curriculum. However, the fostering and maintenance of these relationships beyond academic pragmatism is not necessarily encouraged due to the brief and often individualised concerns of these assessments in the context of the course.

Contradicting this, the lengthy and necessarily intimate tetherings incentivised by the structure if this studio, or more specifically- the exhibition process, led to substantially more considered and personal communication between myself and peers. In particular, the ongoing Facebook conversations and last minute changes in plans, thwarting of goals, or spontaneous university regulation catastrophes (outlined in THIS blog post), were all catalysts for the blooming of kinship among what would otherwise be students with arguably no academic nor personal impetus for friendship.

While this may sound cynical, recognising the disparate academic and artists trajectories Marissa, Gianna, Rose, Linda, and myself are all on, it is arguable if we would ever had crossed paths, let alone developed relationships beyond goal oriented focuses. However, the communication structures necessitated by this exhibition’s realisation have ultimately resulted in the development of authentic relationships- a consequence which is both central to and now a part of my development as an artist in conversation with a network of potential future collaborators. This is exemplified most keenly in Rose and my continued conversations and recommendations of art galleries to submit work to, a friendship that I can linearly trace back to our first interactions during Testing Grounds’ catering process, and more recently, SIGNAL’s PR team.

Finally, despite my absence at the Final RMIT Exhibition due to an unfortunate personal circumstance, my presence at nearly all SIGNAL meetings and tutorials from weeks 8-12 (which can be evidenced in these blog posts: I, II, III, IV), enabled me to ground my practice in a site specific philosophy. For example, my initial brainstorming sheets at SIGNAL were primarily focused on my own desires to have a dark, Bill Henson esque aesthetic. However, as I began to recognise the public platform and nightly exhibition times, it became more aesthetically sensible to consider filming something brighter in order to draw more attention and make use of the contrast between the velvety black skies and the jarring projections. While not strictly speaking a group collaboration, it was through brainstorming in tutorials with my peers that I was able to hone these ideas from their initial groundings in personal taste to a more holistically considered approach which suited the Project brief more.

Taking all these new learnings into consideration, there are a few areas in which I think I could have been more mindful of and brought to the forefront of both my peers’ and my own contributions to the exhibition process. One thing which stands out is the lack of organising a PR group meeting outside of class. Acknowledging that between us we all had fairly disparate timetables, I do think it would have been beneficial to have held short brainstorming ideas between or after our studio classes, as a means to unify both the aesthetic and conceptual approaches of our PR campaign.

While most members did come to tutorials, the twice weekly meeting wasn’t a stable platform on which to communicate our ideas in a temporally focused manner. Resultingly, much communication took place online, which was helpful but can often take away from the personal nature of face to face collaboration. Furthermore, as communication became increasingly harder to organise, much of the aesthetic and conceptual approach of SIGNAL’s PR effort were primarily spearheaded by Rose, myself, and Marissa (with the overarching help of Nicolette); with Rose doing all of the graphic design independently, myself writing and reviewing all copy on these platforms, Marissa who helped organise and print flyers, in addition to drafting a press release and keeping us on track. All group members did volunteer to contribute, but as with many collaborative projects, the longer time goes by and the more inaction or communication occurs, the most integral it becomes for few members to undertake the majority of the work, sheerly out of pragmatism.

Highlighting this is not to point fingers and shift the burden of blame from shoulder to shoulder, as it was obvious at the realisation of the exhibition how much work everyone had invested into their approaches. It is however, a process which was possibly perpetuated by the lack of communication and in person meetups which may have given way to a larger platform onto which all group members would have been able to and been held responsible for specific roles and deadlines.

Concluding this, I do still feel that the work at and with SIGNAL and RMIT exhibition was enriching. Through close collaborations with my colleagues, I was able to develop both my technical and conceptual understandings of the project brief, tailor my concept to the site, reform and inform my approaches to writing for publication, and in the process foster personal friendships with a network of vastly creative individuals. These are all fundamental tenants to developing a grounded and interdisciplinary professional practice, and I hope to further my personal and professional developments through utilising these learnings in my future studio courses.