When finding out what space I was allocated for the exhibition, I was partially disappointed as I was hoping for a corner or somewhere that my two submissions would have their own space to exist separately. Luckily for me, upon handing my spacing was slightly changed and my paintings are now hung directly opposite each other, I am really happy with this decision as it feels like my work is in conversation with each other whilst still remaining independent from one another and having their own space to breathe. Hanging my work was a fairly simple procedure for my first painting as it held up find with some screws tucked in the spaces of the box folds, my larger three dimensional piece however came with a few problems as I didn’t want any screws to be on display so they had to be installed behind the cardboard pieces that were fairly heavy when combined and were stuck to the wood with adhesive velcro and some glue, after a lot of tweaking it finally feels secure up on the wall so hopefully it’ll hold for the duration of the exhibition. I am very excited for the exhibition opening and hope that my work can speak for itself and open up conversations between the audience.

My exhibition proposal stated that I wish to arrange some of my smaller cardboard paintings into a puzzle-like arrangement. I got out all of my paintings and began swapping up their order until I was happy with how it looked and felt like it created a dynamic and thought provoking display. I went looking for some wood  to stabilise this entire endeavour and wasn’t sure what I was going to find but I ended up finding this large thin piece of wood with evenly spaced holes drilled across it, I thought this was quite visually interesting as it brought to mind a pin board, a place where people generally collect ideas to create a larger idea which is what I intended to do with my paintings. I had already begun working on these paintings before I selected them for my exhibition arrangement, I was finding I kept hitting a brick wall when I thought of them as individual pieces of work that would come together coherently, but the main progress of this piece really began when I started thinking of all of the smaller components as just a small part of the bigger picture. I brought this in to uni preparing to hang it before it was complete. I think creating the finishing touches to this whilst in the location of the exhibition really helped me get into a more professional mindset allowing my creativity to be more informed.

My colour lexicon over the last few years has varied a lot but I feel now more secure in my colour choices than I ever have. Recently I have a tendency towards bright and highly saturated colours as these feel suitable to me to address the rich and colourful history of trans people. I love using bright yellows, acid greens, bright pinks and oranges. I also like to bring in pale pinks and baby blue’s similar to those depicted in the official transgender pride flag, these colours to me are also meaningful in that society uses these colours to define their babies from the day they’re born, dressing them in pink or blue so that people don’t incorrectly define them, my use of these colours feels almost  like a satirical comment on the nature of society to confine everything to a binary system. This curation of specific bright colours, to me, is reminiscent of queer coding in which queer people would wear specific colours in order to identify oneself among strangers. I believe it makes my work stand out and become a statement about visibility.