Stanley family art exhibition
On 16th - 18th January I had four of my photos exhibited in the Stanley Memorial Hall alongside five of my aunts. Let me start at the beginning. I first heard about this exhibition from my dad. He told me that a few of my aunts, including his sister, were hosting an art exhibition in the middle of January. The first of its kind actually. Now, I guess I experienced a bit of nepotism here because he offered that he could talk to them to have me and my photos included. As much as I didn’t want to be a nuisance and have him push too much for me, I was excited about the prospect of me being in my first exhibition ever. Plus I liked the idea of a road trip across to Victoria and seeing some family that I haven’t seen in years. Now I’ve never printed any of my photos for display before, let alone for an exhibition, so cue the printing and framing debacle. I had no idea what size to print my photos so I googled what size is typically used for exhibitions and the most common answer was 16x20 inches. So I went to Hutt Street photos and paid $204 for my 16x20 and went on my way. The next day I get a call from Hutt Street and they asked if I was ok to change the size of the images to 16x24 as the 16x20 was cutting off some of my image and I said. “let’s do it”. So I paid the extra $66, picked the images up the next day, and oh my god they were fucking massive. Yes I’d looked up 16 and 24 inches to see its centimetre conversion, but I didn’t conceptualise how large they would be until I opened the packaging. At this point I started getting worried about my images being TOO big for the exhibition and not being able to find frames for them. Turns out, 16x24 inches is outside the standard size for prints and frames so I had to use frames that were a few sizes too large for the prints. While I think the images eventually turned out to be fine, I did have a hard time lining up the images to the white background paper so that it was all even. So a note to all (mainly to self): measure up and find a frame BEFORE you measure and print your images.
We left for Beechworth at 6am on Thursday 15th January. We were lucky enough to be offered accomodation from a friend of my aunt’s for the duration of our trip. Beechworth was only a 10 minute drive from Stanley so it was perfect. After a 12 hour travel day, we arrived but after a quick cup of tea we were off to Stanley to move all our art inside the hall. We shared another cup of tea with my aunts and it was really good to see them all again. I rarely get to see my extended family that much, but it’s a special feeling to see where all my creativity comes from. Most of Friday was spent setting up the hall for the opening that night, but Nick and I joined my aunts on an invigorating walk on Friday morning and I gotta say, I will miss the country. The hall looked fantastic when we were done and so we all went home to primp and prep for the opening. We got back to the hall for 6pm and I got to properly look at all the art pieces that were being displayed alongside my own and wow I have a talented family! The art communities within Stanley and Beechworth are so talented and supportive, I am so lucky I was able to participate in it.
The towns of Stanley and Beechworth are so beautiful, and in another life I could definitely see myself living there in the later years of my life. There was such a strong sense of community and a slower pace of living both in and around the towns that it makes me wonder if all of us in the city have got it all wrong. While in Beechworth we had to pick up some honey (obviously) which I’m excited to try and there was a fantastic community bookshop, Quercus Beechworth Community bookshop. God it was such a nice weekend. Stanley didn’t even have any internet or data access so it was almost like a mini detox weekend and it was extremely refreshing. All in all it was a great weekend that I will remember for many years. I not only learnt many things about exhibiting work, but also about creativity and myself.