Friday, November 23, 2012

Serena Wong on her Internship Placement at JamFactory




I've just finished a 20 day placement at JamFactory that started mid august.
I’m at Adelaide Uni doing double masters in Art History and Curatorial and Museum Studies. As part of my Masters Curatorial and museum studies we are asked to complete a 20-day placement.

My supervisor told me JamFactory had a placement position and I got really excited. Having  recently rewritten my cv for another internship application for MOMA in New York I was able to reflect on my experiences here at JamFactory I realized how much I’ve been able to accomplish whilst here.

This included writing for the annual publication Marmalade which will be launched in February 2013. The bios I wrote for the feature article Generate will be part of the exhibition display – (Generate is The Annual exhibition of final year Associates) and I think that’s really exciting. 

I was able to work closely with the artists, which is so valuable in terms of experience. I participated in the meetings with second year Associates and JamFactory’s curator Margaret Hancock Davis in which we selected works for the photo shoot and discussed what would be part of the exhibition.  This gave me a good idea on how you would approach working with artists on work selection and how to guide artists through to the exhibition end display.  It was really exciting to be able to sit in on these meetings,  getting to know artists and providing me confidence for when I needed to discuss with them information for the generate feature article .

Another highlight was going to the photo shoot. That was a lot of fun. Sophie Guiney, Marketing Manager, and I worked on this together. We unpacked all the work, checked all the artist’s instructions regarding how they wanted it laid out. We had a good dialogue with Tom Roschi utilising his photographic skills, while we had some creative input about what angles and height to shoot at. It was a really nice compliment of skills and it gave me a good idea about the kind of input you have as a creative, but without necessarily the technical skills.

A typical day here has included everything from covering for people when they duck out, staffing the phones, signing for parcels. I’m a little bit sad to leave, but I’ve had a really great time, and the best thing about Jam is that I feel like part of the Jam Family and everyone has treated me like part of the family, which is really great.

Next for me is hopefully an internship at MOMA in New York.



We wish Serena all the best in her next endeavor!