Yesterday I was at the Mall Galleries in London, helping to hang the 103rd SGFA Open Exhibition. We had one afternoon to get over 200 pictures up on the walls. The curator, Vincent Matthews, had done an enormous amount of preparation work, producing detailed plans (technically, I think most of his diagrams were elevations as they specified how pictures should be hung on the walls). Without that, I think it would have been impossible. The work was done by a team of volunteers from the society and the Mall Galleries’ own technicians.
When we arrived at the gallery, all the work (most of it delivered the previous day) was stacked against two of the walls. Technicians were touching up the paint on the other walls. The first task was to move the work to its designated wall. This was easier once the painting was done and the last moveable wall, or spur, constructed and put in place. Then we started hanging.
The Mall Galleries use mirror plates for hanging. This might seem rather old fashioned in these times of fancy hanging systems, but it is by far the most secure method of hanging, and with two people working together, it works very well. Vincent uses a simple but effective template method of ensuring that spacing is consistent: a wooden 10 x 15 cm rectangle that can be used to separate pictures vertically and horizontally.
I quickly discovered that my cordless screwdriver was rather pathetic and incapable of driving a screw all of the way into the plaster walls, despite being very new and fully charged. I switched to a ratchet screwdriver and carried on by hand for a while. Mike and I hung two very short walls (the ends of the spurs) and then we were joined by Tom as we began to tackle the side of one of the spurs. Unfortunately, that spur hadn’t been wedged into place and as I was making the guide hole with a bradawl, it moved. The pictures on our side fell over and there was an unpleasant crashing noise from the other side. The glass had broken on one of the pictures that had been leaning against that wall.
Everyone stayed calm and it soon became apparent that the Galleries could deal with this. The picture itself seemed undamaged and the glass could be replaced. There weren’t any other casualties.
We tried to carry on hanging that wall but even with Mike on the other side holding the wall stready, it wasn’t going to happen until the wedges were installed. After that experience, Tom and I moved on to a wall that didn’t move. It was quite a complex wall and we were rather proud of it once we’d done.
Other members of the Society were painting mirror plates and sticking labels on. It was all coming together nicely – apart from the missing pictures.
The picture intended for this gap was languishing in a Parcel Force depot. Vincent had a backup plan (involving moving some other pictures) for the errant work’s non-arrival at the Galleries in time for today’s opening at 10am, so it wouldn’t have looked like this if you visited today. My two smaller pictures (centre bottom, the green one and its right hand neighbour) won’t have moved.
And my third picture is on the end wall, opposite the others.
Caroline Matthews’ Long Shadows
