Karen Shepherdson @ The Burton Gallery

1. Could you tell me about the background of the exhibition and how the process came about?

 I suppose there are two parts to this quesion: the burton gallery's background and then what I choose to put in here. BG - second year. project space gallery. a space where we can show ongoing projects and a gellry desinged for staff students and partners. with that in mind, we have a programme, last 3 years, at this time, every year a member of staff will be showing their work. and that is regarded as a semnificant body of work. the first part, it is my turn. 2013 winter show, my name had been down for just over a year, i knew i had to work toward this, i was linked to this particular show and the link to that was also the publication. over the year, the burton publication comes out. once year, burton 2, second year. i knew that i had to work to an exhibition, but also something which could translate into a publication. background of my own work: smth i've been wrestling with, almost all my work if not all of it, is taken literally close to home. i tend to really cultivate my landscape, my area of living. that's why when I'm showing away from the isle. when you show work taken close to home away from home, it's fine because it has a sense of difference to where it's been show. but to show work here, can run the risk of feeling very local. i wanted to explore that. could I pull off this showing of the local in a way that was moving beyond just the local. i don't want the work to appear like a local exhibition. rather than local has been a sight to creative manure for me.  when i show away, I feel comfortable. suddenly putting this work where it was produced felt much more exposing. it's much easier to show to people you don't know. you feel more liberated. If you fall on your face, no one knows you. you're showing to student who you expect to respect you, this is my work, this is what I do. you'll say to colleagues, this is my work. far more exposing. very good for us as academics. we've all agreed, out of all the exhibiting that we do this is the most twitchy. yet is probably the modest of galleries.

2. Could you please describe the selection and display process?

we wanted coherence. i met with rob as director. we were talking about the body of work that i produce, what might work in here and we decided to really restrict the images. even if they are diverse, they are located on the jetty or just around that space. geographical link to them. the echoes of ebstine, they were taken at home. but they are 800 m from the harbour. hansest, taken at the harbour. the imag returneed, taken from the archive which had taken images from the harbour. geographically, we decided than that would be this notion of being close to home. that then excluded a lot of work that I might have done in cumbria or scandinavia. even if there's 13 works, because most of them are instant photographs, there 100 in this one and 56 in the one over there, you can see that there are well over 200 images in this very small space. this is quite a large part of my work. my own archive at home probably consists of no more than 30 frames. each of them contain 100 images. i think I had it in mind from the time I was creating the work. i am a repetitive person. i repeat. photographically I am very repetitive. i'd be very unusual for me to take a single image. i don't think i've got the single image. so what I tend to do is take an image and then i repeat it with different subjects. normally the human being in it, not always but mainly. my work over the past 5 years really has been about a collation. i don't reffer to them as montages. I refer to them as a collation where I collate a body of work. in this case, 100 people, rather 200. each is couple. right from the off, i knew that i was going to show them as a collection. individually they are not particularly strong. individualy there are some that are very flawed technically. i only get one hit, i only take one picture. this one for example was taken when the sun was not gonna hit this chap. or here, i forgot my meter reading and I underexposed that couple. i just have to live with that. i feel committed to the idea that it's the sum of its parts, it's about togetherness. this couple, they are to me, perfection. this couple dancing. i don't even think it's about the individual image. each year I go and I rephotograph them. last year only 56 turned up, this year maybe 36 will turn up. it'll shrink and shrink. but over the years, this work will gain strength from subsequent years of work. i did not want to show like this because it is expensive. this frame costs about 1000 pounds including the film. my idea originally was to show it digitally in order to avoid such high costs. i tried the digital print, but i hated it. i thought it was all about the original image. the instant. therefore the original image had to be part and parcel of it. i remember meeting other people, and they said it's awful as digital. so just go with it. this is all computer cut. i then mount it. it takes about a week to mount it. 2 mm overlap, so that's why it takes so long. it's about showing the image itself. saying: unlike a digital image, unlike a negative, it's one of one. there's not another one. you can't do anything post production, you just have to accept it and when you hit, fantastic, and when you don't you just have to live with that error. in 5-10 years time when there's another 5 or 6 sets it will begin to feel like that. that is the largest, that one has 56, 2 of them have 16, the rest have 4, 6, 1 and then there are some polaroid lifts.
In english it means the reworking of something. Jenni H brought me some instant film for the spectrum camera. it was out of date in 2009. i put a picture out and something similar came out. nothing in other words. as it rolls out of the camera, the camera squidges the bottom part where the chemicals are. and runs it across the film. it's like a little dark room. the chemicals were out of date and defunct. they weren't working. you can see where it's stayed bronze and brown the chemicals haven't even run across. then Jenni told me where it came from. her aunt works at a maternity. that film was used to photograph still born babies. that image was given to the parents. they would be the only images they would have of their child. digital came along and the film expired. i can't just throw it away. it felt important. most of my free time is at the jetty. for 16 consecutive days, i went to the jetty, set up the tripod and took a picture of dawn. it felt strong and then i collected images and that's what i got. that's the story. one actually captured a little bit of the sea.

3. What were the aims and objectives of the show? How well have you achieved them?

it's a very good exercise to do a show like this because it forces you to edit and to think about individual pieces but also links between them. that causes you to reflect on your practice. one of the aims was for me to take stock of what i was doing and where i was taking it. this is a very useful excerise for me. i also had to do a public lecture. you have to make sure you're able to articulate at least some of your ideas. the what why and hows. i came back to that. what was doing, how was i doing it and why. the objective is to promote the work. the publication helps with that. it directs to other galleries and publishers. hopefully this is a start point for a collection. i'm hoping that this is going into the bellfast open. this is the submission. the collection might be broken up but it might also go elsewhere. it's a place where you can share work, it's also a place where as a practitioner I take stock of what i'm doing. that helps future direction. at the public talk i was able to show some work that is not shown here but that I believe is emerging from this work. i gained response from people. i committed myself to this project and then i aks people what their opinion is. that gives confidence when taking another project forward. yes I think I am. the show stands strongly. I feel confident I feel comfortable with the exhibition. i find this space very problematic. it's good for us to experience as a practitioner. the reflections, and that it is a working space. i also remeber how the space looked before the burton gallery. it was zapping of energy. the echoes of ebstine are probably the most intimate as they depict my husband. you have to decide, if you're going to do it, you'll do it with integrity. you take a breath and you do it. 

4. Was there anything you wish you had done differently?

One of the things people have asked would be the signage. it is linked to a chart but does not give much info. people have said they would have like a bit more information about the images on display. gallery copy of the publication is a response to this but it does not offer more information about the processes, the hows and whys being explained in a booklet or information board. we're so close to out work and we know it so well. but we have to explain it every time. the work is what it is.

5. Could you please describe the curatorial process in 1 sentence/phrase?

 it's like the final stage of a difficult labor. it's like giving birth. you've got to push. and you're tired. you've done it all you see. to me it is about delivering it that almost physical way. i've cut myself because i focused on the work rather than what i was doing. i labour there's a point called transition. midwives talk about this. a woman will frequently call out I can't do it, because she's put so much energy in it. that's normally 15 mins when the baby is born. as a curator, that's what you're dealing with when it comes to the artist. they might say they can't do it. all those demons come into the frame. it's a point of transition from to the studio (embrionic) to the delivery of the child (exhibition). to me it feels like that. last week when i hung the work, that day was hard. there was a point when i went away. I came back after 1 hour and then we did it. it was all fine. it's about a safe delivery. even if you haven't got the answer you have to find a solution. when i hung mike ownens work he was pretty wired, he had good people coming to the private view and he felt exposed. my job, even if i had other things on my mind, i had to just say it's fine. time and energy was taken by socially stroking. making the artist feel comfortable and appreciated. Buying cups of tea and just chatting about the work. It did not want him to sense that we were running out of time. demonstrating a great calm when inside there's a storm taking place. it's agony really. in this one, i was responsible for myself but i feel a tremendous responsability for the artist we show. i beleive curators should feel tremendous responsability. that is our responsability to deliver the exhibition to the very best of the artists and your capabilities. when going to a non photo exhibition that allows me to focus more on the pharaphanelia of the show as I don't get seduced by the imagery.