How to Put On an Exhibition

You cannot hang an exhibition without work. But having the work does not make it an exhibition either. The moment it goes on the wall it stops being yours alone.

Satisfying yourself, and communicating. Working out how to show the work is the most interesting part of it. It helps to treat making and showing as two different jobs.

Turning up on installation day and starting to hang by feel. I do it too. The outcome is always the same: you rush, it takes hours longer than planned, and you run out of materials.

Preparation is the whole thing. On the day, all you should be doing is hanging what you already decided.

Photograph the works and print them at one tenth scale. Lay them out on a scale model of the wall and you can see the exhibition. Nothing has to be lifted, so you can try dozens of arrangements.

An A4 work is 21 millimetres at 1:10. You can build the whole show on a desk.

Can you put nails in? Is double-sided tape allowed? Plan without checking and you will redo everything on the day.

Group shows in houses and temples come with the most restrictions — sometimes you cannot touch the walls at all. Ask what you may use, then decide how to hang.

However mixed the frame sizes, align their centres — not their tops, not their bottoms. Done that way, frames of different sizes still read as one row.

A frame 400 mm tall has its centre 200 mm below its top edge; a 600 mm frame has its centre 300 mm below the top. Align those centres. Use the viewer’s eye level as a starting point, adjusting the height above the floor for the artwork, the space and whether people view it standing or seated. Do not calculate it as half the wall height.

A wall 3000 wide, five frames each 400 wide. The frames come to 2000, which leaves 1000.

There are six gaps: four between frames and two at the ends. You could divide 1000 by six, but the row sits better with wider margins at the ends.

Give each end 250 and you have used 500, leaving 500. Divide that between the four inner gaps and each is 125. It fits the wall exactly.

250 ＋ 400×5 ＋ 125×4 ＋ 250 ＝ 3000

A single horizontal row is the standard, and there is nothing wrong with it. With a lot of pieces, place one at the centre of the wall first and work outwards — it stays even that way.

The same work reads differently in a bright room and a dark one. The lighting is part of how you hang.

You will want to hang everything, but the space matters more than the number of pieces. Take out the one that nags at you. Cut the count and what remains looks better.

Stand back and look at the whole wall rather than one work at a time. While you are hanging you are too close to see it.

Thirteen years ago I saw Tetsuo Ogawa’s work at Enoaru, a café in the blue-tent village in Yoyogi Park. Not a white-walled gallery — work placed to suit the place it was in.

Hang to the venue. Rather than importing a fixed way of showing, look for the best arrangement for that particular room. It works out better in the end.

1. Go and see other people’s exhibitions, and watch how the work is hung
2. Install as often as you can — the craft improves with repetition

It will not always come off, so install anyway and do not be afraid of getting it wrong. Seeing a lot of exhibitions is the shortest route.

“An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.” — James Webb Young, A Technique for Producing Ideas