The Road to Degree Show - 7

The Final Countdown

By this time a week from now it will all be over. All work will have been submitted and the gallery will be closed. Silence (not the Dr Who kind) will fill the once hectic studios only to be broken by the visits of the examiners who will inspect our work and pass judgement on its quality.

Three weeks from today and the gallery will open once more for the private view.

So, everything now depends on what I do in the next 7 days.

I have my work cut out for me. A great deal has already been achieved. The walls and floors are mostly finished. There are a couple of touch ups here and there but a morning - probably Wednesday morning - will sort those out. I currently have six paintings hanging on those walls each one in varying states of readiness. Only one of them is what I would consider to be finished.

The good news is that another of them is my 3 x 2.2m painting - yes indeed - with olympian effort we managed to get the thing up to the 5th floor. It had reached the point where I had become quite anxious about whether it was going to be included in my show or not. Having liased extensively with the studio manager we had agreed to attempt its ascension on the day with the least wind - which according to the meterologist report was yesterday (Tuesday). I spoke to him on that morning and he confirmed that the conditions were good so we set the time for 12.30.

I was to assemble a carrying team, and make sure I had some strong rope attached to the painting to help overcome any obstacle in its transportation. The studio manager would meet us in the foyer, turn the fire escape alarm off and we would then begin the journey up 5 flights of the external fire escape.

I must have been giddy with excitement as I misinterpreted several of these arrangements. I assembled a team all well and good - a very competent team no less to whom I am extremely grateful - and told them to meet me in the foyer at 12.30. Then I went on the hunt for the rope. Rope is one of those common items that everyone in the world knows about and assumes everyone else has, but no one actually does. After chasing down a number of leads I was eventually directed to the Goldsmiths store - a seemingly mythical place shrouded in mystery hidden behind some buildings which, I believe, have been designed to be so unremarkable as to allow you to walk past them everyday without ever noticing they were there. I love coming across new places I never new existed and Goldsmiths (whose internal architecture was clearly designed by Escher-on-crack) is full of such places.

The Goldsmiths store is not a store as such, more a place where things which have no place end up in. The keeper of the store was a man on the verge of being a fantasy caricature - small, distinctive facial features and a nervous, fidgety energy coupled with a slight 'oh-god-another-student' grumpiness. However he was very helpful and handed me some good rope, despite his misgivings over what I intended to do with it.

A point should be made here that this was one of my misinterpretations for I had told the keeper of the store that I was going to tie the rope to the painting and then to myself to anchor it against any gust of wind that may carry it off the roof.

Yeah - I know, I'm an idiot.

Anyway - minutes later I have rope round my waist and the canvas, and the excess slack is being used as a skipping rope for my transport team. My second misinterpretation came into play and instead of waiting for the studio manager I promptly ordered my able bodies to begin the lift. We made short work of it and soon had the painting halfway up the building. I cast a glance at the growing spectator crowd below and noticed the studio manager looking up at us with incredulity.

Around that point I had the realisation that the more bonkers the situation the more it felt like art.

Finally we made it to the 5th floor fire escape entrance and the door opened as if it were the gate to heaven. The painting was brought inside, I was berrated (with amusement) for my errors, and that was that. At the end of the day I am not sure who was more relieved - me for finally having the painting in my space or the studio manager for not having a number of students blown to their deaths.

And so gentle reader this morning I find myself with a mere 7 days ahead, all set to put the finishing touches on my paintings and walls, and then abandon my work to the mercies of the examiners and the public. This final week will be a busy one but the end is in sight.