An insight into the SGFA curation process in 2023
The SGFA National Open exhibition has taken place at the Mall Galleries since 2021 and I have been managing the curation for the SGFA hanging team since 2019.
Managed by the Federation of British Artists, a visual arts charity founded in 1961, Mall Galleries offers learning and engagement opportunities for everyone. It encompasses 450 SQM of dedicated exhibition space, spread across three connecting ground level galleries.
This year we had use of both the North and East galleries for our exhibition. I had to measure up the North Gallery well in advance, so that I could work out a preliminary curation of how many pictures we could fit in before the council could go through the final selection process for the artwork. I worked out approximate quantities of small works (up to 40cm x 40cm), small medium sizes, medium, large, and extra-large, allowing for sensible margins between each picture to ensure a good aesthetic curation.
After the selection of works had been agreed, we established we would have 237 pictures and 1 3D piece on a plinth to accommodate, which was the same number of pictures that we had at our final Menier Gallery (now permanently closed) Open exhibition in 2019, and about 93 fewer than the previous two years, when we had the big West Gallery instead of the North.
I decided to use the North Gallery, that consisted of 3 rooms, to house the 172 small, small medium and medium size works, leaving the tall East Gallery and entrance for the 65 larger works.
The whole process took me a few weeks to work out the elevations to scale, with dimensions and images of the work on, meaning that my own artwork had to go on hold for the duration, as I was also working on my interior architecture paid practice alongside.
For the bigger works I allowed for bigger margins, so that they had more space to breath and for the smaller works, I decided to not have less than 10cm between them, to avoid a crowded look and to permit the ease of labelling. I kept to the principle of placing the works into categories and, where I could, I would try to hang the individual artists works in sets, which was not always possible because of their varying sizes, frames, and subject matter.
As we only had about 3 1/2 - 4 hours to hang the artwork so I had to make all the key decisions in advance, to include dimensions, setting out and cross referencing the pictures with their catalogue numbers. To ensure placement accuracy I made 7 plywood spacers of 10cm x 15cm, as a time saver (they are much lighter to carry than MDF board). They could be used instead of tape measures, which helped to speed up the hanging process a lot. All the pictures had to be screw fixed to the wall with mirror plates, for security and to comply with the Mall Galleries insurance requirements.
My curation drawings and plans, plus plywood spacers
At hand in, my colleagues attached small tags with the wall references on to the back of each picture, to save the hanging team time in working out where to place them, using the information that I had added to the check in list. This process proved very effective.
On the hanging day we had 4 Mall Galleries technicians and 8 of our own very capable SGFA members to hang the work and to put all the labels up. It all went very smoothly (with great camaraderie) save for a couple of issues. One artist had given the wrong dimensions for their work, which meant a little bit of juggling to fit them in, causing a slight delay, and a large picture did not arrive, so I had to swap two pictures around. There were 3 small pictures missing but the Mall Galleries found them the next morning, before the exhibition opened and they were able to hang them in accordance with my elevation plan.
The missing picture arrived 3 days late and just before the private view, but could not be hung, due in part to it being in a metal frame. Metal frames are not allowed because mirror plates cannot be fitted to them, and metal frames can also cause damage to wooden frames when stacked awaiting hanging. Also, due to it missing the specified hand it date and time.
Photographs of the SGFA private view by kind permission of Felicity Flutter RI SGFA
The exhibition this year received much praise from visitors and the Private view was very well attended. We now look forward to the rest of 2023 when we have several exciting exhibitions planned.