Monday, August 6, 2007

Press Day, 3 August



We arrived at 9 am in order to finish installing our work. After lunch Olga interviewed us for Delovoy Peterburg, and we invited her to make a rose and write a message. Then other journalists came round and made roses and looked at what we were doing. Our work came to life once the dialogues began.



We met Alex and Jennifer, who work for the magazine 'St Petersburg: In Your Pocket'. They made roses and chatted with us for ages. They said they really liked our project. We were delighted that they could see what we were trying to do and wanted to take part. Alex told us about his project, 'The Positive Project'. He is collecting stories about positive, happy moments in your life. You can contact him at positive.project@gmail.com or positive.project@mail.ru

It's Too Hot!

Getting Adjusted

It’s hot here in St Petersburg for people coming from the nice, cool, breezes of Shetland. We have mosquitos in our flat at night because we need to keep the windows open for some air. Our flat is a little bit dark so we bought candles to cheer it up a bit. Unfortunately they couldn’t stand the heat either and just keel over into an arc shape. So now they live in the fridge and we’ll bring them home to use in the cool breezes.

Our First Arrangement

Making Progress

Overnight we realised we could hang the roses made by the Russian visitors on the large wall that formed the backdrop to our clotheslines. The wall provided the perfect opportunity to display the Russians’ gifts very beautifully. It solved the problem of how to display their work as there really was no room to hang them on the clothes lines alongside the Shetlanders’ roses and messages.

Our Original Space

Getting Started at Manege

On Thursday 2nd August we dragged our suitcases through the city streets from our flat to the gallery. After surviving that ordeal we met Alyona, who took us to the space where we would set up our work. Later Larisa, the Curator, arrived. She explained she had a new idea for our installation and showed us an alternative space nearer the entrance which had a huge wall. We were delighted because it was lighter and gave us more room for visitors to circulate around each clothesline and gather round the table to make roses and write messages.

The Manege Central Exhibition Hall