Side note on gallery invigilation

I'm having this week off the internship as waiting on a few agreements between supporting orgs before I can start moving.

BUT feeling I need to vent from my little gallery visit last Sunday.


I went along to a new exhibition at a gallery usually full of chatty, informative invigilators. Soon after walking in I reached up to point out a feature of a sculptural work to my partner (pointing: a great social exchange between people as they share interest and talk about artworks) and soon after had someone run out from behind a counter and snap at me not to touch the work. This is fine, maybe an overreaction but I assume lots of people had gone to touch this work before me. I explained, and walked away trying to laugh off my embarrassment.

So as I was talking and laughing about the incident, another invigilator who had seen the whole thing reprimanded me again. I told him I hadn't touched the work, and instead of apologising he made me promise twice that I hadn't, and acted as if he didn't believe me.

I spent the rest of the exhibition feeling like I was being watched every time I approached a work - I swear they walkie-talkied all the staff to tell them to watch out for me!

Way to make you feel welcome.

March planning

I've spent the last couple of weeks with my head down writing. 


Working on administration side of an outreach program that will involve a small group of high school and university students. This has proved pretty time consuming, given than it's only one of many, many public programs planned for the year. A big portion of this is due to the fact that we're working with children - hence working with children checks, permission letters, medical info, risk assessment, fun fun.


I'm coming to see how much paperwork is involved in even what seems to be the smallest community engagement type of project. I have a bit of an idealistic belief in 'community based' planning, that public programs and almost any gallery activity should be community driven from the outset. Unfortunately this approach is incredibly hard to perfectly translate into reality - aside from heterogeneous groups and massive populations, the amount of permissions, consultation, data-gathering, mediation... Which is why I am more willing to understand there's a place both for sustained community engagement programs, as well as (well informed and flexible) 'top down' projects. 

One month in

Hello! I'm finally posting after almost a month in my intern position at the arts centre. At this stage one day a week and I plan to be here until at least July.

Really enjoying the experience so far, with a friendly team of staff which makes a big difference. I'm acting as a public programs and education assistant with two key projects:

1) project managing / schools liaison for a community outreach program with BoS and MCA (though unfortunately this may change depending on funding)

2) Research and put together a brochure on the history of the site - a beautiful industrial renewal gallery much like Carriageworks. Eventually this info will become an Auslan interpretation via a smartphone app (which I think is really cool)

Last Thursday I managed to sit in on a gorgeous kids' play called White, all about two men who live in a hand-crafted white world that slowly gets infiltrated by colour. It's a really beautiful play that made me appreciate how great art and programming for kids can be, and how disappointing that we have so much hyper-bubbly junk instead. Badge-making workshop that followed was also good fun - if every gallery invested in a badge-making machine there'd be a lot of happy children.