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Friday 22 June 2018

#200Fish Newsletter June 10th 2018


#200Fish Newsletter June 10th 2018

Firstly, apologies for the length of this rambling newsletter. If you haven’t time to read it all just now, please skip to the end where I have summarised the key points.

As you may know, we have confirmed dates for our main exhibition of the fish art: open to the public on Thursday 23rd August and every day to Monday 3rd September. We will set up the exhibition on Wednesday 22nd August and have a preview party that evening for artists and friends. Tuesday 4th September we take the exhibition down.

We need to have the artworks in the gallery as early as possible on the 22nd. That means you either have to bring your work on that day or you get it to my house any time before that, delivered personally or sent in the post. (Address at the bottom.)

For 2D works to be hung on the walls, we have to have them framed and with a string on the back – there will be a rod and hook hanging system (I believe!). I realise that if you live far away and intend to post your work, sending framed stuff can be tricky, especially if it involves a piece of glass rather than plastic glazing. If it really can’t be helped you could send me work on paper and I will put it in a frame. We don’t have a budget for this so it will be something I find in a charity shop and the time and work involved means I can only do this for a few works so please don’t rely on this.

3D works we will accommodate in the best way we can. We will provide plinths. The sooner we know how big your work is the greater the chance we will have of getting a plinth that fits it.

Insurance. We do not have any insurance cover for your artworks. Of course we will endeavour to take care of your work but please arrange your own insurance if you feel it might be appropriate.

Publications. As you know, we’ve been putting your pictures and writing on our website as soon as you send material to us. We’re now in the process of converting all this material into a print. The current plan is to produce two things, one a small format, cheap, catalogue, which has your pictures and the names of the fish and artists but not a lot more text. We hope to produce this for about £3. We also want to produce a much more lavish book in a larger format that really does your images justice and includes all the informative text, poems, songs and so on. It will probably cost nearer £20 but it should be a nice thing to own and keep.

Part, and it’s an important part, of this project is to get artists to learn a little about their subjects and to communicate to their audiences what they find out, not just through images but also in words. We’ve asked you to do a little research, find something out about your fish, factual, scientific information, the fishes place in culture and folklore perhaps, and your own personal relationship with the subject. You might feel moved to versify or write a song. On the website I added a few links to information sources to get you going.

Now some of you have produced some excellent pieces of writing. Thankyou. Some of you, in the light of the idea that your words will be lying on the nation’s coffee tables for years to come, might like to review what you’ve done and change it. Easy, just email me an updated version. And some of you will prefer not to write anything at all. That’s fine; there is no compulsion about this; it’s entirely up to you. For fish that we don’t get much text, we might add something ourselves. We do want each page to be individual and reflect the work of you all, our multiple authors, rather than appear to be a book written by one person. That said, we reserve the right to edit your work to improve readability where we feel appropriate or add information where interesting stuff may have been missed.

Copyright. Now, forgive me for getting a bit school-teacherish here but while it’s fine to get information from books and online sources, what we can’t do is publish material that is somebody else’s intellectual property without their permission. So please don’t just copy and paste a paragraph from Wikipedia or wherever; it has to be your own work. If you do quote somebody else’s words then you must acknowledge the author with a reference to the source. By sending us written material you declare that are the copyright owner and that you give this copyright to the Lincolnshire Time and Tide Bell CIC which will then have the right to amend and use in any way.

Could you please check, by looking at the webpage that shows your fish, that I have your description of the media used and the dimensions of the work. If this information doesn’t appear could you send (or re-send) it to me, please.

The actual artworks. The exhibition will be set up on Wednesday 22nd September and we aim to have a party that evening. It’s going to be a rush, hanging 200 pictures in less than a day so we really need your works in the morning or earlier. Either get your works to my house any time, by post or call in yourself, or try to come to the gallery as earlier as you can on the Wednesday.

It’s entirely up to you whether you wish to offer your work for sale or not, but if you do I need to know the price you want beforehand, so I can print a price list and labels etc. We won’t be charging any commission but the gallery may charge a commission. They have still not decided this. It might be worth assuming there may be, say, a 25% commission, so set you price accordingly. Tell me the price you want to receive and then I’ll add the commission, if any, onto the list price when I know it.

Collecting your work, or not. The exhibition ends on Monday 3rd September and we have Tuesday 4th to take down and clear out. If you want your work back then, please come and collect. That, of course is tricky for those of you who have sent works from the far corners of the planet. We’ll make individual arrangements. However, we have plans to take the #200Fish on the road with exhibitions at various venues. We have ideas but nothing definitive yet. It would be great if, unless you particularly want your work back immediately, you could leave it with us, to exhibit again. Fantastically, some of you have sent us your artwork saying it is a donation to our company and we can keep it or sell it if we can and keep the proceeds to further future projects. Thank you very much. Needless to say we would welcome further such generous gifts.

For 2D works please ensure they are framed and with D-rings and string, as we will be using a rod and hook hanging system. If it is really impossible to send us your work in a frame (it’s on paper and you are posting it from Mongolia) then we do have a few frames that we found in charity shops and will do our best to present your work as best we can, but we don’t have a budget for this so don’t rely on us! For 3D works, we’ll just treat each piece as best we can.

If you want to try to sell prints, priced and cellophane wrapped, that’s fine, though we only have a limited display space.

Please make sure you have given us your contact details in the real world, rather that just an email address. You may wish to see our Privacy Policy: http://transitiontownlouth.org.uk/bellPrivacy.html

If you have signed up for doing one of the fish, but now find that you won’t be able to produce an artwork after all, please let us know so that your fish can be allocated to somebody else. It would be a shame if somebody gets put off painting a picture because they think somebody else is doing one and then it turns out that they don’t.

Finally and in other matters, the Time and Tide Bell installation on the beach north of Mablethorpe is now scheduled to happen a bit later in the summer, hopefully just after the #200Fish exhibition closes.

Later in the year, lightly pencilled in 14th to 28th November, we will be holding another art exhibition at the North Sea Observatory. Called ‘By the Sea’ it will be a contemporary take on the wild coastal landscape of Lincolnshire. This is not quite the mass participation project of #200Fish but we have still a little space available so if any of you would like to submit a proposal of work to be submitted for this show, please e-mail me. http://transitiontownlouth.org.uk/bell3.html


Summary:
Set up day: Wednesday 22nd August 2018.
Party night (vernissage, for those who like such things): evening of 22nd August.
Open to public Thursday 23rd August to Monday 3rd September, inclusive.
Take down day Tuesday 4th September. Collect your work then if you need it back at the end of this exhibition. Leave it with us if you want it shown again.
Either send or deliver you work to my house in North Somercotes before the 22nd August or bring to the North Sea Observatory on the 22nd, earlier in the day the better.
2D work should be able to be hung on a wall with hooks. This probably means framed and with D-rings and string fitted. 3D work will be displayed as appropriate.
If you want to offer your work for sale make sure you tell us how much you want, net of any possible gallery commission, in good time so we can print the price list. (We don’t take any commission ourselves – as a community arts organisation we’re on your side!)
If you would like your work retained by us for the next exhibition of the #200Fish that’s excellent.
If you want to donate your work to us so we can sell it and support our future projects that would be marvellous.
We do not carry any insurance for your works – leave it with us entirely at your own risk.
Have you sent us your writing about your fish? We intend to create two publications, one a cheap, brief catalogue and the other a more lavish, more expensive, book. We don’t have a print deadline set but send your written material soon or you may miss out.
Please confirm that it is your own work and does not infringe any copyright or other intellectual property rights. Understand that by sending us written material you agree to give copyright to the Lincolnshire Time and Tide Bell CIC and that we can then use the material in any amended form and publish in any medium.
If you are interested in our next exhibition, ‘By the Sea’, let me know.

Biff Vernon
Artistic Director, Lincolnshire Time and Tide Bell Community Interest Company
Tithe Farm, Church End
North Somercotes
Louth
Lincolnshire
LN11 7PZ
01507 358413








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