OUGD603: Disposable Society - Exhibition Promotion

For the actual exhibition on the 5th March, I created a Facebook event over a month in advance to inform everyone of the date, time and other information. This will require promotion separate from the call for submissions, and with a different aesthetic as well.

The header I kept similar to the existing submission posters, using a collaged aesthetic of ripped up posters around Leeds, changing the saturation and tones of colour to make it slightly different while keeping a balance of hues.  Instead of using black text on white strips I reversed this to stress the difference between calling for submissions and the final event.

As our first exhibition as Goat Collective, both showcasing our work and curated by us, we want to have a good turn out on the opening night.  To advertise the event on the 5th March, we thought of several ideas including posters and guerrilla advertising. The posters should be fairly cheap and easy to print, so screen prints would be ideal to create a large amount, however online advertising is where we expect to promote the event the most.

Several ideas came to us but with limited time we thought the most effective way to produce a memorable campaign would be to utilise the concept of disposable society even further, both in physical adverts, GIFs and posters.

Guerrilla advertising

One of the street art acts I researched for the context of practice module consisted of two artists utilising their calligraphy skills to cover thrown out objects in the streets of Montreal. Using this as inspiration, Dan created a stencil that we could transfer on to objects using white, black and red spray paint. The quick and easy application was suitable for the cold nights and days of early February as it meant the mark was made within less than a minute, and the repetition of each stencil is consistent everywhere it is sprayed, which this will build up recognition and awareness of both the words "Disposable Society" and the date of the event.

We have been using three colours, red white and black, to spray the stencil with as these allows it to been on both dark and light surfaces, as well as adding colour.

Disposable objects photoshoot

Playing on the idea of a pristine gallery exhibition, usually consisting of plentiful white space and encompassing a minimalist, stripped back aesthetic, ideas developed to use this whiteness in the exhibition posters. Using objects we sought out from skips, bins, and basements, between us we managed to accommodate a broken, and then disposed of, radio, microwave, cans, cups, bottles, a camera, cartons, cassettes, and others.  We selected objects of a range of sizes to create a composition of disposable objects, those that society has thrown away.

These were spray painted white and photographed against a white background, mimicking the clean white aesthetic of contemporary art galleries. We tried out various compositions and ended up with some great photos we can now use to produce both printed posters, online poster JPEGs and GIFs.