Hanging the Leek Exhibition

Today I went North to Leek to help hang the MTF's (Midland Textile Forum) exhibition in the Nicholson Institute. It is home to a lot of William Morris stuff and the Institute specified that our Exhibition should be 'Inspired by Flora'. And it was too - all 80 works of it.

What interested me, in view of the Guild Weaving Exhibition in October/November, was how MTF went about the hanging. The first thing, the organiser, Julie Ring, did was to have everything unwrapped and laid out so  that each artist's work was together. Then she checked that she had everything on her list. There were 8 or 9 helpers and these were split into two teams, one to deal with the smaller items which were to be put in glass cases and one  team to organise the hanging. 

The space consisted of one very large rectangular room with a semicircle at one end which contained a stage. This caused some problems.

The first idea was to hang each artist's work together. That idea lasted less than thirty seconds. The hanging items were then grouped in colour (sort of), certainly harmonious and each piece was propped up or laid on the floor in front of the place where it was intended to be hung. Then inspected, group meetings held and things shuffled about. A few large 3-D items were eventually put on the stage.

The glass cases were easier somehow because it turned out that only three artists had items suitable for the cases and they could easily be organised into one artist per case.

So what are the lessons? Well all those people had started work at 11 and finished the hanging by 1530. At that point, Julie started adding labels to each work. This was dead easy because the Gallery is happy about using Blu-tack and the labels were glued onto foam board. We need to consider how we are going to attach the labels in Oct/Nov. My original idea was printed A4 sheets and laminate them while putting a number on each object, But I am now wondering about foam board. Rosie Price and I have a visit to the NNA next Tuesday and I hope we will sort everything out then.

Another two hour drive to get home and a minimal amount of anything done in the evening! I  finished the 2/6 warp for the Megado before I left for Leek this morning. Tomorrow, I will start putting the 2/30 onto the Sectional Warp beam.