The Mary Greg Project

The Project in brief: After spending a day at Platt Hall. We require you to develop ideas that might be used for a special Exhibition. The Exhibition is hoping to use all the Public Areas of Platt Hall for a short special "EVENT". The theme of this event is Mary Greg and her Bygone Collection.


My focus: the key collection!

Different kind of events
An investigation as a performance.
Web site: "Investigating the Mary Greg collection at Manchester Art Gallery"--> Word taken in the first degree. 


The Audience
After the visit to Platt Hall:
We could take pictures of some objects, turn them into flyers with a catch phrase written on the back, eg: "Would you like to know where this key gives you access to ? Then come to the Platt Hall on the.....2012 to find out!"

After the group tutorial:                                                                               

Find a way to make my flyer more interesting, like a piece of art. How about making the key?(laser cutter)  It could be a kind of flyer that people do not want to throw away and I could use them as the starter for the "Investigation".

                                                                                         


Ways to interpret the collection
A performance: An investigation where people would
have to discover where the keys are hidden and then make hypothesis about their use.
The flyers could be the start point of this investigation, people would have to bring them.


Story Lines
After the visit to Platt Hall:
"The objects, their hidden stories, who owned them, where did she obtain them from?"
"Perhaps you can help us untangle the truths from the fiction?"
--> We could let visitors write their own theory, hypothesis..


Visitor Participation
"How can we allow people access to the storage areas without compromising the safety of the collection?"
--> Divide them in little groups.
--> Give people plastic gloves at the entrance of the storage areas (within investigation).
-->Place "guards" in each room to look after the objects. 


While I was trying to make original flyers, the idea of making my own keys came to me. Thus, the last week before the presentation with Liz I have concentrated my work on this idea. I went to the Mac suite to draw my keys on Illustrator and then to the laser cutter to make prototypes of my keys, two in wood, two in plastic and two in an other kind of wood. The cost of a hundred keys would be 5 pounds which is quite cheap.
Finally, my work was more about the way to promote the event so I decided to reoriente it on this aspect to present it to Liz.