It’s been a sweaty time for the team installing the Familial Clouds installation in Venice. Before we left we’d been joking about what the temperature would be in the windowless, un-air conditioned room that we’d been given for our exhibit, but it’s not so funny now. We spend a great deal of our time trying to avoid dripping sweat onto the very delicate elements of the installation.

The good news is that everything survived the journey – hundreds of mirrors, dozens of fragile paper models, and all our tools. After a session nervously unpacking and checking the condition of everything, we spent an exhausting day filling, sanding, and repainting the walls and a large built-to-order plinth to create really smooth surfaces for the hand-drawn diagrams and notations they’ll be covered with. Once that was done, we laid huge drawings out on the table and walls, and marked the positions for the multitude of tiny items that will be laid out across them.

The next task: Simon Twose and Victoria University Master’s student, Henry Stevens, will begin attaching a multitude of brackets, mirrors, slides, models and drawings to the walls. At the same time myself and University of Auckland Master’s student Melanie Pau will begin drawing a large diagram on the plinth. Unfortunately, the fifth member of our team, Patrick Loo of Jasmax, has been laid up with a nasty flu that he picked up on the plane. We’re really hoping the rest of us haven’t caught it too!