Postopia
The title of this exhibition is Postopia, and the overall topic is about 'How technology changing human behaviour'. The work I exhibited in this exhibition is called 'Do You Remember?', they are some acrylic plates with abstract patterns on it, based on the pictures on my phone. This is my first time participated in a formal exhibition. The whole process of the exhibition, from submitting proposal, submitting information for propaganda, transporting works, install the exhibition, and takedown the exhibition, is very fresh to me. And the thing I think the most, besides my work itself, is about how to install my artwork. The process of the exhibition made me realize the importance of the relationship between the work and the environment. For my own work, the position of my work was adjusted to another place after being placed for the first time, because If the work is placed in the original place, the route for walk is not appropriate for the audience. The other thing is that at the beginning I just simply placed my work on the floor. However, they gave light on my work, and it looks immediately became better. using some tools to make my work look better, which I didn't think of before.
Πανδώρα /魔盒
It's an online exhibition about the malleability of Pandora's box. My work "The Feedback" was displayed in this exhibition. The problems I encountered in this exhibition mainly occurred after I submitted my works. Since the online exhibition space was not enough to accommodate all the works, all the artists who participated in the exhibition made some reasonable adaptations after discussion. I think this unexpected situation let me know some uncontrollable factors that may be encountered in exhibitions. A work may not always be exhibited exactly as your expectation, and this also gives me experience about dealing with unexpected events.
Immurment
This is a collaborative exhibition at the Crypt Gallery with artists in the MFA. I divided This exhibition into two parts, one is my work in the marketing team, and the other is the things about my artwork.
I was in charge of banner design and some trivial work in our team, such as putting up posters, hanging banners, editing and printing the artwork description for the private view. When the poster was determined, I began to design the banner according to the poster. The difficulty of this work for me was that I needed to design different versions. In the end, I designed a total of six versions, including horizontal and vertical versions. Putting up posters is a very simple thing, but it requires some communication skills, because besides putting up posters at 6 colleges of UAL, I also need to find places to put up posters around London, so I need to get permission from the staff of these place, such as art shops, a coffee shops near V&A, and a bookstore at areas with high traffic.
For my artwork, time management is also important because the marketing team's work has taken up some of the time. Moreover, the choice of materials is also a problem, because our exhibition space is a dark and wet space, I can't draw on the paper, so I started experimenting with different materials, such as metal, fabric, Polypropylene. Finally, I chose the translucent Polypropylene sheet because I thought the effect of light transmission was very interesting, although I was not sure how it was displayed. Fortunately
It was a surprise, It’s worked better than I expected. Also thanks to the curatorial team, The reason is that at first, I requested curator team for a room, because the title of my work is "The Key Office", so I want to have a room as an office, and I planned to hang my drawings close to the wall, but there is a certain distance of the ceiling so that we can see there is some shadow on the wall, but actually a room is too big for me. Then the curatorial team arranged it in the corridor, I found it has a better lighting effect.
MONO
This is a workshop on loneliness and solitude, organized by students at UAL, which invited eight artists and illustrators, including myself, to share their work with each other and audiences. In the first part of the workshop, we needed to use the materials they provided to us to improvise a miniature scene to express our understanding of the atmosphere of loneliness and solitudes. In the second part, artists and illustrators shared their stories about loneliness and solitude in their work with the audience, and then explained the works they just improvised in the first part, and the third part is the Q&A section.
In this workshop, speaking in front of many people was the most difficult part for me, which I am not good at. But after this workshop, I have more confidence in the face of such situation, as well as more experience of the speech, such as, how to adjust the rhythm of my talk, according to the reaction of the audience, and because of the limitation of time, I'm going to temporarily remove my speech content, but at the same time to ensure the content was compeleted. In addition, the Q&A section was very important to me, because then I was able to know what I should have told them, but I tacitly assumed that they might already know and therefore leave it out from audiences’ questions.
In a word, this workshop is a good opportunity for me to let people know me, and I also got to know some great artists and illustrators, which is a very happy experience.
Wechat Emoji
This work is three sets of emoji works named Mr. Hu that I created last year and this year. I put them on the WeChat emoji platform on 27/07/2019, 01/05/2020, and 24/05/2020 respectively. After uploading, the platform will display the total download number of each group of emojis, the daily download number, the total number of sent emojis, the daily number of sent emojis, the regional distribution and the age distribution of users using the emojis on the page of my WeChat account. And this data has helped me a lot in deciding what I'm going to do next.
Here are some examples. There was a long gap between my first upload and my second, but a short gap between my second and third, so I could see that the second upload significantly increased the number of downloads of the third group of works. I think the reason is that for this kind of product, if it hasn't been updated for a long time, even for users who are interested in your work, in the beginning, it can be easy to forget it. Thus, when I do this kind of work in the future, I will pay more attention to the interval, so that it will not be too long nor too short. Also, I can see a slight increase in downloads of my Emijo over the holidays. Considering that the WeChat emoji platform can promote emoji on the first day of its release, I will consider uploading my emoji during the holidays next.
Future plan
First of all, I will return to Shanghai to develop my career after graduation. Because in China, Shanghai can provide a better artistic environment, I can get in touch with more peers and have more opportunities to show my artwork.
I plan to look for some work related to animation, design, or commercial illustration first, so that I can ensure my source of livelihood and continue to create my artwork. At the same time, I will keep an eye on opportunities for exhibition and artist residency programms. In the beginning, I will rent an apartment with a large common space/living room with my friends and create artworks at home. When my income is more stable and I have some savings, I will try to rent a studio with my friends and carry out some cooperative or own projects.