Day eight

Day eight: Well today is going to be a busy day for us because we are visiting the Bank Street Gallery and helping out doing a bit of manual work there so we get an idea of other jobs that support galleries. We started out by finishing off things that we hadn't because we had a while before we left. Then Vicky told us we had a little competition to do today, to win two tickets for the showroom cinema. We had to take photos of 'Hidden' Sheffield. I thought it would be hard because we didn't have a lot of time to get to different parts of the city centre. As soon we left though I suddenly had loads of ideas in my head. Especially to do with the Peace Gardens. I managed to capture some good images.

I wondered around for a while to try and find some interesting things to capture or a new place to investigate but I couldn't really find anything that stood out to me. I walked back to the Peace Gardens where Vicky asked us to meet her. I found some of the group and we sat and had a chat whilst we waited. We all get on quite well. When Vicky arrived she said we had another half hour so we could all support with Bethan and josh’s projects. I had to play dead on the floor for Bethan which was a bit embarrassing in the middle of the Peace Gardens with a lot of people around. Everyone walking past was probably thinking 'what the hell?' but it was quite funny to do in a way.

We then walked through the centre of town to help Josh with his project, we met a very strange guy selling joke books. You could tell he was a bit of a joker himself. Vicky encouraged Josh to use him in his project and one of the group selected a card that would work for a good photo.

After taking a few more pictures we walked to Bank Street Gallery which seemed pretty weird from outside, more like a house. Inside though it was very cool and had a quirky set up. It was kind of surreal in the first main room with decorated deer heads on the walls by the exhibiting artist Susanna Gent. One of the deer heads was entirely covered in shells, this was my favorite.

She also had another room full of taxidermy. She skins dead animals herself and makes them part of other things, like a badger with a big glass bowl in its stomach. It’s normally the other way round she told us in the her talk. The most interesting part of the room was the video playing on the television. It was of Susanna skinning a fox whilst casually drinking a can of beer every now and again. I didn't like this much, I'm not a fan of the dead animal part but it was interesting to see.

Oh I almost forgot that we first went into one of the rooms at the front of the gallery to see a guy called Bryan Eccleshall. His work seemed pretty basic to me because he was just copying the work of postcards off the projector. It wasn't even his work it was other famous artists. It looked rushed so it wasn't very good but I liked the fact he kept asking us if he was cheating by copying it. He told us that it wasn't cheating because art isn't a sport which I understood but there is no point in copying art in my opinion, it is better to be original.