Finish! Cheers!

It totally took about two month to finish my internship in the Burwood Gallery. It was both rich and pitiful. During my internship, for one hand, I devote all myself to the work. I realized what on earth the gallery needs to prepare for before and during the exhibition. For example, it was far not enough just collecting the good artworks, as people always take for granted. The fact is the staff had also come up with a series of ideas and policies to engage people to the gallery, and that was important point, like different programs are carried out catering to different group of ages, offering special service for the disabled, giving opportunity to those who are live in the remote, finding the advertisement media, etc. The more people we engage, the more successful we will be in the closure of the gallery. For another hand, coming to my main work as an assistant of my manager, what I did was to introduce audience certain artworks, which may have history or story behind them that people unaware of. My communication ability has promoted to a large extent as well as my communication presentation, and I began to know the importance of showing kindness and sharing knowledge. What is more, I also learned a lot from my researches. At the very beginning, it went boring and time-consuming, but the more you have done, the more interesting it was. To be honest, I gained a lot from my research and knew how to prepare and organize an exhibition. Consequently, I would like to express my gratefulness to my manager, who is a nice lady with patience and kindness. Everything seemed to be in the charge of and she did a lot of favor to me during my internship. In a word, serving in the gallery was an amazing experience in my campus life. Not only can I realize the process of the exhibition, but also I can improve my own communicability and ability to meet emergency.

Last Day

It was the last day of my internship, and you could not imagine what I was going through here. I actually was doing the totally different thing in my last day. Some of the staffs were send to Strathfield to run promotion for our next Wednesday exhibition by Michael Knight. The reason why we choose Strathfield is that it is not for away from Burwood and most importantly, it is where full of Korean. Though this exhibition rarely involves artworks from Korea, we still hope there would be more Korean taking part in it. Moreover, there is a special program in our gallery is the Art School. This program is all about teaching the children to print and trigger their enthusiasm of art. “The child is really an artist, and the artist should be like a child, but he should not to stay a child. He must become an artist. That means he cannot permit himself to become sentimental or something like that. He must know what he is doing.” it was the slogan in our poster. Very convincing, is not it? The considerate thing is that there would be no worrying of the language barrier, because the gallery has already equipped with Korean teacher so as for easy communication.

What I in charge in this job was to hand out brochures. It was uneasy thing to do that kind of job. Some people would not care about you, and even some throw away the brochures after they received. I was so sorry to see that. Anyway, I think it was a good program for the children. Today passed quickly, although I finished my internship in the gallery, I would like to be a volunteer in the coming exhibition. Hoping everything is going on well next week.

Week 9

Everything goanna be alright and more and more people come to visit our gallery. I arrived gallery at 10am as usual today. Most time I spent in the gallery and I found I gained a lot from my internship. 

My work today is to check the email that the audiences replied when they got our invitation which I sent last weekends. Although I have sent more than 200 invitations to our audiences one by one, I am happy that a part of audiences replied me and they would like to attend our new exhibition by Michael Knight next Wednesday night. So I was asked to make a list to record their names and some basic information. Then, I made a phone call to ask and confirm another part of audiences who did not reply me whether they will come or not next Wednesday. It was my first time to directly contact to our audiences. Some are individuals and most of them are art magazines and art companies. At first I was really nerves and I did not have much confidence to talk with them because English is my second language. I was afraid that the audiences cannot understand what I said. However, my supervisor thought that I could do it well and she trust me. Under his encouragement, I tried to call each audience. The fact is that it was much easier than what I imagined. After my phone call, the number of audiences who will attend our new exhibition increased. From this work, I knew that it is the first step that costs troublesome, be confident you can succeed. Finally I was so excited that tomorrow is my last day of internship in the gallery. I am looking forward my last day! Cheers!

Invitation and education program

It was an amazing week that our gallery has been carried out successfully. We held a performance by Ro Seung Joo with the Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra and Sejong Traditional Music Orchestra with her Gayageum Last Saturday and Sunday. So we all got gallery early to prepare the performance. We construct a small stage for performer in the gallery and ranked 40 chairs for audiences in the front of stage. My main work on Saturday was to email our Invitation to audiences to attend exhibition ‘hue & saturation’ opening night, presented by Michael Knight on Wednesday 14 November from 6pm – 8pm.  Each  three weeks, our gallery will organise a new exiition. Although the work was not hard, it still spent me a long time. There was a really long list of audience we want to invite and I was asked to email the invitation one by one. We invited a great number art workers and artists as well as media companies.

In order to attract more audiences to the gallery, my supervisor assigned me a research on Sunday which related to local schools, nursing home, disabled facility, kindergarten and RSL clubs among the areas of Burwood, Strathfield, Croydon, Ashfield and Fivedock, that means these portion of people, though in small amount, they meant a lot to the whole group of visitors. The education program carried out by the curator, our gallery would hold a free tour and explain the story of artworks for these kinds of audiences. In my view, it is a very considerate one, because they will not be charged in admission. And this will be our major highlight in the educational program, which is a decent platform to not only spread the fame of our gallery, but also provide more opportunities to those who have few chances to come to this kind of activity. Returning to my research, I did it carefully and patiently, for I get the real point of this research. Finally, I hope everything is going on well in the following days.

Week 8

It was a little quiet in the gallery yesterday morning. Except some audiences came to visit and I needed to explain the artworks for them. So, I had to be familiar with the all artworks and knew the story of each work in the gallery. My favorite one named Fragments of Cities, made by Lydia Sun in 2011. Before this artwork had been created, Lydia Sun has travelled extensively and was fascinated by the variations in art brought about by different cultural influences. He planned to pursue imagery that was strongly inspired by the contrasts between Australia and Korea. He focus shifted their similarities rather than their differences. He thought every city has a story and a history. This work shows the nature of cities that resulted from a detailed examination of small fragments of two different cities – Sydney and Seoul. The physical transformations of these cities interact with his recollections to form multidimensional that reveal not only the forces that change the cities but also processes that alter his memories. The resulting works use a combination of welded, distressed and weathered steel as layers in the paintings. The steel can form objects, lines or backgrounds and there is intentional ambiguity between what is painting and what is steel. The ideas of multiplicity and layering are explored and accentuated through these processes. When I saw this artwork at the first time, I could not understand the meaning of it. Sometimes the audiences also have the same confused, it is really happy that I can explain to them. Another artwork also gives me a deep impression. Hibiscus by Eun-a Ko is an intriguing art work as she paints visually pleasing flowers with a fair amount of detail and it works quite well with the contrast of the black background. However, aesthetics is not its true value, as the black background is represents ashes and the flowers are contrasting the darkness with truth. The truth that while, flowers may light our faces with a smile; the only thing that can light our souls is god. Before the intern, I could not image and understand the deep meaning when I saw the paintings in the gallery. I always thought them in the simply ways. I found that it was really amazing when I can understand the real story and inspiration behind each artwork. By the way if you are interest in our gallery, welcome to Burwood Gallery. Our opening days are form Monday to Sunday except Tuesday, 10am to 5pm.

Week 7 Burwood Gallery- About AKVA

This week was the best week ever. The opening ceremony was held in this week and it was so fantastic and unforgettable. Our gallery is situated within the heart of Burwood, in the old court-house. Built in 1900, some of the rooms in the Council Chambers were used for courts in Burwood up until 1907. Federation in style, with its distinctive stone arches and rendered brick facade, the court-house in now the present day Burwood Gallery. Every three weeks, we will host a new exhibition.

The gallery now is presenting our opening exhibition featuring art works by Association of Korean Visual Artists in Australia (AKVA), entitles 'Crossing On Art' a group exhibition by eleven artists whose work is primarily abstract and landscape.. AKVA is running by Korean-Australian artists in Australia. AKVA was established in 1996 by two different art associations-emerging into one. ‘Soonsu’ Art Association and Korean-Australian Art Association got together and in late 1996 officially become AKVA. Currently, Lk-lae Jeong is a comity president for AKVA 

Artists include Eun-a Ko | Jung-hwa Ko | Sung-jong Ki | Young-bai Kim | Jain Kim | Lydia Sun | Suhhee Sirohi | Gabi S.Lee | My-kyoung Lee | Myung-deok Jeon | Ik-lae Jeong

This exhibition will allow you to see how art are influenced by the artist heritage and also the culture surround them. Sometimes artists see present, future and sometimes they look back and reminisce. The exhibition is ranging from Contemporary to the traditional art forms. You can feel the effects of bi-cultural influences on their art as you have yet to experience. Consequently, our gallery aims to provide a multicultural experience for its experience for its audiences an engagement with art, to create and foster strong connections between Australia and the word, to promote easily accessible and culturally enlightening dialogues. I was so excited about this exhibiton, because I was a member in market group. I did some researches for it. Firsly, I knew different kinds of art works so that I can savor them in different angels. In addition, according to my media advertisement research, it really does help to propagandize the exhibition so that more and more people come to have a visit. I feel good and satisfied with everything. I made it.

First Opening Day

It was quite busy and tired yesterday. It was the first opening day of our gallery. Our opening exhibition featuring art works by Association of Korean Visual Artists in Australia (AKVA), entitles 'Crossing On Art' a group exhibition. We have invited many friends and artists to participate the opening night from 6 pm to 8 pm for our first exhibition and there was a special event by Ro Seung Joo to performance Korean traditional harp ‘GaYaGeum’. It was really amazing; most audience lost themselves in her music. By the way, Ro Seung Joo has mastered Korean callssical music at the Ewha Womans University, and has performed with the Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra and Sejong Traditional Music Orchestra with her Gayaguem. She is also famed for her performance of Hwang Byungki’s music. So, our gallery, Burwood Gallery will be holding a performance by her of Hwang Byungki’s Chimhyang-moo and Chuchunsa at 7 pm on 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th November. It is free and seats are limited 50 in our gallery. Welcome!

In order to present a wonderful night, we prepare everything early, as well as, we offer a lot of traditional Korean desert and fresh fruit and drink to the audiences. It looked professional when all staff wearing the same uniforms. During the exhibition, there were 11 Korean artists come to the gallery and kindly explained the meaning of their artworks. My main work today is easy but tired. I have a list of invitation, when the each audience comes in the gallery; I need to ask them whether they are on our invitation list or not. If not, I would ask them whether they mind leave their contact number or email address. So, our gallery will invite them to visit our new exhibition in the further.     

Our gallery address: 24 Burleigh St, Burwood. (5 min from burwood station)