Happy New Year, y’all! (Bit late, I know).
Near the end of last year, I had a bit of an adventure via my random relative Nora, who makes the most beautiful things. She’s been part of the Gera Hoehlerbiennale for the last few years, and asked if I want to collaborate with her on a proposal for the next one.
This meant putting together my very first proper exhibition proposal, after so far only ever stumbling across ready-made exhibition opportunities, which was nervewracking and cool at the same time.
The art festival is held in a system of old beer cellars under the town, which were built between the 16th and 19th Century. Not all of them are accessible, but there’s usually four or five in the festival, and you get to them through different buildings. They’re all quite dark and damp, and in some of them you have to wear hard hats because the ceiling’s so low, and they’re just about the coolest place I can think of to have an exhibition in. The bizarre climate in there means that not every type of material works well, and some of the artists come up with the wackiest shit, but there’s always things in it that are totally amazing. Go have a look at previous years’ stuff here now!
We came up with a pretty cool idea for it, too, linking Gera with Edinburgh, but unfortunately we didn’t get in, bummer! This year they’ve greatly reduced the number of artists taking part (from more than 50 to 30), because getting round all of them can easily take a whole afternoon, so our application was not accepted.
It was pretty good having to put together the proposal, (and working with/ learning from Nora, who’s an old hand at this stuff, always handy to have folks like that around!), and maybe next time we’ll manage to convince them to let us in…
Either way, if you ever happen to be in Gera during the Hoehler Biennale, go have a look, it’s definitely worth it!