TY students go behind the scenes at Isabel Nolan’s exhibition

During the week, Liam and I (Wacky) have been helping out with some of the preparations for the Model’s next big exhibition called, ‘A Hole Into The Future’ by Isabel Nolan. This exhibition features many great pieces of Isabel’s work including many sculptural pieces of art. Most of her work is very abstract and mainly consists of many different shapes. We had a great time learning how Isabel approached the design of the sculptures for example how she developed her various techniques. Her attention to detail was amazing especially on one of her Blanket’s, which is extended out from the wall, which for Liam was a pain to put up. We had a great experience during our time at the gallery as we got an insight of what it’s like to be a curator, it was a pleasure working for Ollie and Isabel.

The experience included not only an insight into the work of modern artists, but it gave us a feel of how work in a real working environment is in fact difficult. Wacky, when left with no job to do attempted to hunt down any form of work available, although when doing so he ended up with near frost bite due to holding a cold ladder in the freezing Irish weather. The weather itself had become a major problem with a lot of the installation work being postponed due to its effect on certain jobs. For example Isabel’s new commission for The Model called The Outward Form had got slightly damaged when the men unloaded it from the truck.……… When installing the piece Isabel tried to paint the Blue sculpture outside but unfortunately for her she had gone out thinking the weather was nice enough to work in in-fact just after having the paint mixed it started to rain.

Besides these mishaps, our other work went fine, such as the many covers of paint we placed upon the walls of the exhibition. However, some paint ended up on the ground leading to hours of scrubbing and cleaning with Richard’s arsenal of cleaning tools. My least favourite out of the cleaning jobs was scraping paint from the ground, as a lot of it didn’t come off that easily. In all both Liam and I found the week interesting and fun filled with some ups and downs along the way.

On the final day of preparations, we managed to get up both posters for the exhibition with only one minor mishap with Liam nearly dropping the poster, which thankfully didn’t end up being damaged. One worry for the second poster was that it could buckle since it’s located in a very cold area, although Isabel assured us that she could reprint the poster if such a hazard were to occur. I(Wacky) enjoyed Friday probably the most because I had a lot to do

Blog written and directed by Karl Wacky Coleman.

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