The exhibition is now hung and I’m pretty pleased with it. Having half the space I originally expected was a bit of a bummer but it was fine in the end. It’s an interesting collection of work asking thoughtful things in very different ways. A very different from the view point of the older stakeholders in this project and for sure widening the breadth of the discourse around porn and our relationship to it.
Now to try and get people to see it, it’s not a gallery space that gets a lot of footfall and the show is small. I am grateful for the free space however. The timing of this whole show is a little off though, my stakeholder parents are heading into a tough time of year ( I should know, December is frankly brutal when navigating the logistics of a family of five through Christmas and and multiple birthday and school things too.) and now is not the time to really try and engage them in this sort of thing. Spring is when you get all the drunk mums.
Anyway, I’ll persevere and see what happens. Hopefully we’ll have a good turn out with the workshop and I can maybe put together one last session before the end of the course. I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic because it undermines what the exhibition has achieved. A collection of artists have created work in response to this project and given it a visual companion or analog that can be utilised and appreciated in myriad ways.
Reflecting on the earlier Sex Ed for Parents Workshops there was interest in having a book or postcards that shared information about the artworks and subject matter that could be easily used as a prompt in the home. Put on the fridge for example it can spark conversation with your kids in a more natural way than a sit down talk about sex Having this art collected for the exhibition in this format could be a way around the difficulties of copyrighted more well-known work as well as championing younger emerging artists.