Confessions of an Exhibition Organiser

By Craig McKenzie, Councillor for Salons

IT’S TIME TO get something off my chest, possibly from the night I was driving home from a selection meeting in Mosgiel. Speeding up at the start of the motorway a flickering caught my eye. A glance in the rear mirror revealed numerous white apparitions floating above the open deck of my ute. The increased wind had dislodged prints from the cartons that hadn’t been closed properly. All I could do was slow down and get as many as possible to land on the deck and continue slowly until I could repack and continue home, dreading how I was going to tell people that I had lost their prized prints.

That is not really what this confession is about though. It’s more about the joy when packing prints for return that you find a return address label in the box, needing only to be attached to the outside. Even better is turning over the address card on those purpose-built boxes to find the return address.

I’ll also confess to not enjoy puzzles when opening prints in many times used, homemade parcels with multiple layers of tape along every edge - so you have no idea how best to open them. What pleasure it is to find one where the sender has been kind enough to write “cut here” and draw a line indicating where to cut.

Another puzzle arises when packing prints ready to be returned. There is no way to remember how the contents of every box were arranged. It is so much easier to repack the prints sent face to face with a simple protective sheet between them. They arrive in equally good condition as those individually wrapped and taped, and are so much easier to deal with.

Finally, what a relief it is to find the information entered in the entry form spelt correctly with capital letters in all the right places. This means the data can be used for the catalogue without having to spend valuable time editing.

These are a few things to keep in mind when entering the SONY National Exhibition or Interclub Competitions.

SONY National Exhibition opens on 1 February 2021 and closes on 1 March 2021.

Interclub competitions are open now and close on 1 March 2021.

I couldn’t believe it on packing day when all the packages were complete, with no one complaining about not being able find a print. Fortune smiled on me that day.

Image by Neil Gordon APSNZ