Fresh Slice EXHIBITION

One week on from Fresh Slice, we sit to reflect the success of our inaugural exhibition and pop-up shop that took place on 11-12th September at FortyTwo Studio. We’re still elated with the success and the turnout we had!

At the end of my honours year, I was approached by one of the stage coordinators to be a part of an illustration exhibition at FortyTwo Studio’s Creative Hub in their new building. What began as an interest in submitting work for the exhibition quickly turned into spearheading the exhibition overall, taking on a lot of responsibility to plan, organise and design the visual identity for the exhibition. I rallied students to enter their work in our show and sat in many meetings to ensure everything went to plan - and thankfully it did!

I found myself throwing myself into the leadership of this project and took the Fresh Slice identity under my wing as a new vocation to explore in my creative journey. With this, the exhibition expanded into a two-day event with a student pop-up shop and industry involvement in the form of a portfolio review session and guest talks from local designers in our community. I managed to overcome many bumps in the road at the final hurdles and surprised myself with my ability to adapt to last-minute challenges.

Images from the event, featuring some beautiful photos of the guest talks on Thursday night shot by Sam Longmire from FortyTwo Studio.

I had such a blast working on this and I’m very grateful to everyone who had a hand in helping us pull the event together and completely takeover Fortytwo’s Creative Hub. Thank you so much to FortyTwo Studio for trusting us with your space and letting us unveil your Creative Hub to our shared creative community. We appreciate your support throughout this project and we look forward to anything else we can do with you in the future. What an honour to be able to mark the first event using this space and to open the door to all the possibilities you may use it for in the future. It has been a joy to give back to the community and enrich the creative sector in Aberdeen, as it is often an area that feels forgotten about in the Silver City. It means a lot to me to be able to collaborate with an institution of the local design scene and be a part of the early stages of this mission.

We’d like to thank Susan Montgomery from Hampton and Robert Gamble for braving the guest talks and sharing their experience in the design industry, passing on their advice to our recent graduates and returning students! They were a hit and I know many people found their journeys very insightful and relatable.

And a very special thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. Everyone from industry who came to support us on Wednesday, all of our volunteers and everyone who came to see the show and signed up for our talks and portfolio reviews! This wouldn’t have been made possible without all of your engagement.

See you all at the next one!

Watch the exhibition walkthrough below.

Work displayed in order: Chrissy Simms, Gabriele Jaceviciute, Lisa Stewart, Samantha MacMillan, Jenny Hyde, Phoebe Hill, Emily Burgess, Nicole Whyte, Ella Maxwell, Caitlin Rennie, Louis Robert-Rocher, Max Cosgrove, Owain Williams and Connor McCarthy.