History part 2: Kitty Serendipity

4 hours. 6 Performers. 7 Cameras. 500 shots. 1379 words. 8 digitally manipulated images. 60 cross-processed photos.

2 weeks of exhibition

The next exhibition was called Kitty Serendipity at The Kitten Club in 2005. It was an excellent, although tightly convoluted idea for an exhbition. The premise was being backstage at a fictional burlesque show, photographs of four girls getting ready, getting dressed, watching from the wings.

In an effort to weave it as tightly as we could, the models were given cameras to photograph themselves, each other and their experiences in the shoot, often capturing the photographers in the middle of photographing the models, focusing or clicking the shutter.The image is of Robert Reid photographing Ilona Nelson and it's one of my favourite. In fact, I made it the flier image. There were also 8 digital images, made up of photographs and closeups shot on the day. I then gave each of them to the collaborators and they wrote something about the image. These words I then worked into those images themselves.

And everything was shot at the Kitten Club, the venue for the show itself. Any more tightly wound and I wonder if the universe would have imploded.

I wanted to create something special for the opening night, so I invited burlesque troop Voodoo Trash Dolls to perform. The place was packed to the rafters and heaps of people dressed up to attend. I was really happy with both the show and the night. The cute bartender who made up a rose based cocktail especially for the occasion and insisted on giving me them all night just topped it all off :)

And about a third of the artworks sold, which is always nice.