Londons - The making of an exhibition
The process of creating Mass’ first collective photographic project and exhibition.
Londons, The Polycentric City is the first photographic project conceived and curated by Mass with the aim of proposing a series of images that reflect the individuality of every photographer involved, as well as forming a coherent body of work providing a snapshot of how the British capital is evolving in 2021.
Since the beginning it has been a collective effort. This approach wasn’t just determined by the vastity of the subject matter - which needed multiple points of view in order to provide a multifarious perspective on London’s urban growth, but it was also an experiment in putting together resources for a shared goal.
While we were initially quite open about the final outcome of this collective project, after six months of shooting and collectively reviewing the individual works, we decided that the best way to show Londons to the public was through an exhibition.
One of the biggest barriers that usually stops many emerging artists from showing their work outside the realm of the online world is the burden (not just financial but also logistic) of finding a suitable space, printing, framing, setting up and advertising a show. Being a group of photographers with different backgrounds and levels of experience was an enormous advantage as we were able to put together our resources and overcome some of these challenges.
In fact, the Londons exhibition is not just the result of the photographers’ work, but also of many other creatives picked from our network of contacts. As a starting point we looked for a graphic designer who could help us visually connect the individual projects in order to form a cohesive body of work on the gallery’s walls. Emily from Stanley James Press had experience working on photographic projects and exhibitions and her contribution is the thread that visually connects all the photos on the wall, online and on the pages of our first self-published zine.
If it’s true that photographers are good at telling stories through images, it is also true that they are often terrible at writing essays to accompany their work. A writer was an essential addition to our team to bring that extra value to the story we wanted to tell, and Diane Smyth used words to do what Emily did through graphic design: strengthen the interweaved narrative of the overall project while cleverly highlighting the unique characteristics of each area covered by the photographers. Her words can be found on all the graphics accompanying the exhibition as well as on our first issue of the Mass.Journal.
You can buy the Londons zine here.
Furthermore, while each photographer used a printing lab of their own choice depending on the desired result, we collaborated with The Framing Room for the production of most of the frames.
Framing is a very delicate aspect when setting up an exhibition and the types of framing, woods and mounting solutions are almost endless. In less than a month Jacob and his team were able to advise on the best choices and produce 32 custom made frames ranging from dry mount walnut box frames to window mount dark stained sapele frames.
Collaborating with all these creatives is essential in order to achieve the high-quality result we wanted, but it doesn’t come cheap. Here is where applying for a grant proved to be a real game-changer in the way we could approach the project, and one of the reasons why the Arts Council deemed “Londons" worth of support was exactly because of its collective nature. The funds we obtained have surely made a difference in the final result proposed to the public. The support of the Building Centre has also been vital, from the very beginning they shared the excitement for our project and treated it as a great addition to their lineup of events for the post-pandemic reopening.
After putting all these elements together we curated the artwork layout in a way that could work cohesively on the wall. Caroline Charrel’s architecture background and rendering skills helped to visualise the space before we could even put a mock-up print on the wall. The uneven characteristics of the space, with its nine walls of different lengths organised in a Y shape floorpan, worked in our favour creating separate sections for each photographer without giving prominence to any work in particular.
Eight of the walls were assigned one to each photographer, while the ninth was used to display our zine as a form of alternative curation of the project, proposing a slightly different narrative through the use of some of the images that were not displayed in the exhibition.
As the opening approached we gathered all the produced artworks and graphics and with the help of Install Archive, an experienced exhibition installation company, we set up the work on the wall with millimetre precision handling all the fragile artworks with the utmost care.
Finally, there can’t be an exhibition without an opening event. This is when all the different pieces of the jigsaw came together and months of hard work was finally in front of everyone’s eyes. A simple piece of advice: make sure you have enough drinks!
Jokes aside, the making of Londons and its final outcome were made possible by the collective nature of our collaboration with other photographers and creatives. It was an experience that cemented our belief that working together opens up endless possibilities, not just in creative terms but also commercially.
You can find out more about the Londons project here.
Londons – The Polycentric City was on show at the Building Centre in London:
17 Sep - 4 Nov 2021
Building Centre
26 Store Street
London WC1E 7BT
Featured photographers:
Sue Barr, Croydon – Motor City
Caroline Charrel, The River Before Us
Simon Kennedy, Hyenas and Hippopotami
Andrew Meredith, Walking the Westway
Luca Piffaretti, Sugarcoated Island
Francesco Russo, Urban Beings
Polly Tootal, True Fictions from an Unreal City
Henry Woide, Road to Nowhere
