On the 5th September at Hula Cafe and Gallery I had the opening night of my exhibition and it was an evening of really mixed feelings. On the one side it’s a really incredible feeling, albeit with a lot of pressure, having an exhibition of your work on display but just one week before the exhibition, specifically on Saturday 30th August, my father died.

I’m not going to lie to you, I feel absolutely destroyed and very very sad. I’m also still in shock and at the point of publishing this blog post I’ve been back in Taiwan for two weeks dealing with his funeral and various family issues. Combining this with the stress of opening the gallery, getting ready to go back to University, all the pressures of working I can quite literally rip my hair out. But, Marie Varley who is the gallery manager at Hula, contacted me back in February and we agreed on a set date for opening the gallery.

Marie did ask me if I wanted to change the opening night when I told her about my father passing but with all the work put in and invites sent out, I didn’t want to delay the opening night. I believe my father would like to see me carry on with my life as I should, live happy and chase after my dreams and career. Another consideration was getting a flight ticket to go home. At just one or two days notice the price of flight tickets back to Taipei was absolutely ridiculous but my husband found me really cheap flight tickets with Emirates who I’ve flown with before and really like.

Marie, Chris and myself hung up and arranged all the work on the 3rd of September. Chris had a wedding that day so he came straight over after the wedding but thankfully Marie hung up the majority of the work as she has experience with the space and also I’m pretty useless at these kinds of things (and Chris was busy). So I took Marie’s advice, everything was hung up and the whole exhibition looks really great. So thank you Marie.

On the day of the opening, the weather was pretty miserable, being wet and cold outside and also very typical of Scottish early autumn weather. Two of my friends texted me beforehand to say they wouldn’t be able to attend and there’s always drop off with invitees, so when the gallery opening at 6.30pm and no one turned up at first I thought “Oh no, this is embarrassing, no one has turned up”. But about 5-10 minutes in a lot of people suddenly turned up and this really made my day. I feel I am really lucky to have these friends who always support me and the support of my family has been imperative in getting to where I am now. A big thank you to everyone who turned up for my opening night, thank you.

I must also give a special thanks for my husband Chris. He’s helped me out throughout the whole process of getting ready for the exhibition and was an awesome help in getting all the prints and framing done. He was also the best taxi ever helping me to drop things off. I love you very much and I know I’m a massive pain in the butt but always support me. Thank you.

So here are some exhibition photos. Chris took these photos and I hope you like it and can check it out. Exhibitions are a lot of hard work but they are life achievements and you learn a lot from them.

Right now I’m in Taipei dealing with everything but I’ll be back in the UK on the 28th September so if you want to get in touch I’ll be back then.