My First Exhibition

The last couple of weeks has been so exciting as I've been preparing myself towards my first exhibition Photography Now with Brick Lane Gallery. My path or progression for this has so been so stress-free compared to how my fellow uni mates and myself put on our end of year degree show, and having so much more indepence has deffinitely made me feel like a real pro! Over the course of the last three years at university, I was so determined to do my own printing and handling of my imagery because I felt that I had more of a personal connection with my work, and for the end of year UCA Degree Show I did exactly that and mounted my work onto MDF by myself - it looked good but reflecting back on it now, it was a pretty poor decision. So, I decided to give Metro Imaging an email and made the decesion to have professional printers look over my work and handle the printing - for my first exhibit I wanted my work to look spot on.

After a lot of emailing back and forth with the guys from Metro Imaging, I took a trip down to London and sat with a lovely man called Tim and we looked over my images - his job was to spot out the mistakes in my work and together we sat and discussed them and what solutions would help to resolve the issues and he perfected them for me. After a couple of days I went back to see my prints before giving him the go-ahead for the mounting team to do the last part of preparation of my work for Brick Lane Gallery. Wednesday 16th September was the opening night of Photography Now at the Annexe, Brick Lane Gallery. And my goodness what a wonderful night it was! The other artists and myself had a fantastic turn out and the work was superb! (Even better, my other half, one of my regulars from the pub I currently work in, my university friends and my uni-Mum (Mumma-D!) all turned up and it was lovely to catch up and celebrate with everybody.)

The staff at Brick Lane Gallery put on a wonderful opening night with glasses of wine and a chance to meet the other artists. Luckily for me, I met a lovely man who also resides in Norfolk like myself and he owns his own darkroom and photography facilities and has mentioned that he would kindly let me use them for my own work, as he found that there isn't really many artistic photographers like ourselves who use traditional methods of photography in Norfolk (If you are one of those, please get in touch as I would love to hear from you). For once in my photographic career, I stood back from my work, gazed upon it and felt really proud of myself for getting to where I was that evening. It is rather rare for young artists like myself to get invited to showcase work at a Gallery within 6 months of graduating, but I couldn't have done it without the love and support of my other half, my friends and my family - so thank you guys! So, on with the next project and roll on the next exhibition!

#ClassicalNude