Hanging prints

The exhibition opened (unofficially) on monday, and with the Sheriff of Nottingham coming to open the exhibition there are two yet to hang.  I think this experience, what to do and what not to do, has been invaluable.  There have been a few didderent ways that people have hung/mounted their work.  The main two being mount boards and framed pictures with mirror plates. 

On friday, prior to the original hanging date, Toby and myself visited B and Q to get supplies. We bought 2 sets of 4, 2 inch square lengths of wood, screws, rawl plugs,  drill bits and velcro.  Fortunately Toby had a hammer, drill, screwdriver etc.

The first job was to mark out the centre line. This is the eyeline for the height of the average person and would form a common point and reference for hanging images – for my images I marked the top of the middle image to match this centre line.  After marking out where images would go,  wooden batons were nailed onto the wall.  I used 2 30cm lengths of wood for each image. These would raise the images from the wall and add a little depth. These images would be attached by velcro, so that they could be removed/adjusted at a later time if needed. 

After hanging my prints on the friday, I helped Laura H who also had mounted prints which were also velcro’d onto wooden batons.  One thing which I have noticed about the velcro was that although the velcro was ‘super heavy duty’ the glue on it most definately wasnt. Over the course of the wek after hanging my prints, two continually fell down. Ultimately I super-glued the problem prints onto the wall. However this didnt prevent damage to the corners of two of this images. 

After hanging my prints I had time to help others with hanging their work.  Harriet was next to hang and she had 3 A1 frames from habitat. These needed mirror plates, firsty because they are quit heavy frames, but also because these plates stop people from taking the images off the wall in what is a very public place. Two smaller screws attached the plate to the frame. As the frame is quite narrow, pilot holes needed to be drilled, so that the wood is not split. Holes were then drilled into the wall for rawl plugs. 4 mirror plates were used for each frame as they were quite heavy. One important thing we found out about the Habitat frames are that they are suprisingly poorly made. Harriet cracked one of the pieces of glass which sandwiched the print with no real force. Also the wood wasnt cut accurately and had to be cut down so the glass could be removed. Poor effort on Habitats part, but nothing which couldnt be fixed with a knife.

Next was  Waynes prints which were rather straightf orward after the previous hanging. The prints were smaller and so more manageable. Most recently I assisted with Garvins prints, which were 3 A2 prints and again straightforward.

All in all I think the two main points Ive learnt from this exhibition is to avoid using velcro to attach prints and to avoid habitat frames.

Lastly I did the personal statements for everyones work, I wante these to be uniform and to look neat. So after everyone emailed me their personal statement I printed them off in a uniform font and size, spray mounted them onto foamboard and velcro’d them onto the wall.

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