Portrait of a Grimsby Girl
The opening of the 62 Group Ebb & Flow exhibition is getting closer but the project itself has been almost two years in the planning.
It started with an invitation from Grimsby Minster to show our work in the Minster which is a busy and vibrant resource for the people of North East Lincolnshire, an “architectural gem” tracing its history on this site for more than 900 years. I soon realised, however, that because we are such a large group of very diverse artists that there would not be enough suitable hanging space and display for smaller 3D work in the Minster for all of our work to be shown.
A second venue was sort and we were offered the upper floor, the mezzanine, of the Muriel Barker Gallery at the Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby. The Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre was purpose built and opened in 1991. Its permanent exhibition tells the story of the Grimsby Fishing Industry in its heyday in the1950s. The white-walled space at the Fishing Heritage Centre contrasts nicely with the grandeur of the Minster.
Lucy Brown
All at Sea
The Ross Tiger, GY398, is an ex-working 1950’s trawler and the largest item in the heritage collections. Lucy Brown, one of our exhibiting members has made site specific work to be shown on board the Tiger. The image left shows Lucy’s ‘sea bags’ which will be installed around the living quarters on the Tiger. Once the venues were in place we worked on the detail of the project and funding bid to Arts Council England by Grimsby Minster which was successful. This enabled us to work with freelance writer and curator, June Hill who has been on hand to advise the group throughout the project and who will be opening the exhibition on 13th September. It also helped the group to put together a full education programme and to produce a full colour catalogue with professional photography which will be on sale at both venues.
Details of our education programme can be found here. Many of our members visited Grimsby in February when we were given a tour of both venues and of the museum collections store. All of our exhibitions are selected by a selection panel of 5. The panel is different for each exhibition and can include a representative from the venue. The selection process has now been completed and 37 pieces of work were selected for the exhibition made by 28 artists.
Photography Day at the Minster
This week we also completed the photography for the catalogue which is now in the design stages. The catalogue will be on sale at both venues.
The photographer for the majority of the pieces is David Ramkalawon who came to Grimsby from London for 2 days to photograph work at both venues.
The snap left shows David photographing work in Grimsby Minster.
Next week the hanging process begins. Watch this space for more ‘behind the scenes’ glimpses of Ebb & Flow.
womanwithafish 
went to grimsby to see Ebb and Flow last week. Enjoyed the variety and skills, but as it seems is a habit with 62 Group exhibitions it was not well advertised and smaller than one might expect? One poster outside Heritage building, no obvious signs around the area and inside and the guard directed me to the fashion exhibition on the floor below.
The Ebb & Flow exhibition has been widely advertised in both ‘Embroidery’ Magazine with an additional double page editorial and ‘Selvedge’ magazine, on Facebook and Twitter, and also previewed in the Journal in N E Lincolnshire. It has also been advertised through the regional EG groups throughout the Humber and Yorkshire region. The 2 venues have also advertised through their own networks and several press releases were sent out.
We don’t really have too much control about signage at venues but we have put 2 large banners outside the Minster. At FHC they only have provision for 1 x A1 poster. It’s a shame the person you asked didn’t know whereabouts our exhibition was. Usually the staff there are very good.
Re: the size of the exhibition well that always depends on the number of submissions we get and how many pieces are selected. In this case we had 45 submissions and chose 37 pieces to exhibit over our 2 venues with most of the larger pieces being shown at Grimsby Minster.
62 Group exhibitions are not always large in size. Recent exhibitions such as Platt Hall (2012), Farfield Mill (2012) , Pinkwood (2013) and Constance Howard Resource Centre (2013) were all a comparable size or smaller than the exhibition in Grimsby.