Face Exhibition - Hollie Turner

Hollie Turner is one of our current A2 Art Students who over the summer was involved with ROAR over the summer, here she tells us what she got up to:

 

Face Exhibition

ROAR is based in Rotherham Town Centre, and was set up to create a thriving art community in Rotherham. They’re based in Westgate Chambers and have exhibition space as well as artists’ studios. Everyone there is really friendly, and willing to help you with anything you want to do within the arts industry.

I worked there for a week, seeing the day to day running of the place and the groups who use the space within it. I created a booklet for volunteers who were completing creative workshops, as well as designing email templates for ROAR. Also, I helped with a ‘Rotherham Walkabout’ in town centre, where we created a small pyramid installation outside of the imperial buildings. For this I worked with local artist Nick Summerbell, who then showed me the work he has exhibited in Rotherham Library.

http://rotherhamroar.com/roar-walkabout-1/

During the summer I contacted artists from the local area, some of whom where members of ROAR, to ask them to exhibit work in a portraiture exhibition I was curating. This exhibition featured traditional and more experimental portraiture, in ROAR’s ‘Buzz’ gallery. This ran from the 18^th September to the 8^th of October. I also took this opportunity to exhibit some of my own work alongside artists work. This experience was really great, as it allowed me to get fully involved in my own project, as I wrote the proposal for the exhibition, contacted the artists and organised where the work should be hung. This gave me real experience of curating as a career path I am interested in pursuing in the future, and was really valuable to me as well as thoroughly enjoyable!

Communicating with artists from the local area showed me how much there is happening in and around Rotherham, and is something that I’d recommend anyone to get involved in. As I previously said, everyone is more than willing to help and everyone offered me advise about the future and my own art work, including Edwin Wraith, who is an artist based in the local area, who helped me with my drawing technique when I did some quick sketches of him while he was there.