Framing and Hanging
For framing my images I finally came to the conclusion of a size of A5. This is because of my idea of keeping the work intimate, and by keeping the images small, the viewer must look closer making the connection between this more intimate. The images I have chosen to display are:
When I first printed these out, they came out too dark and you were unable to see them properly in the frames. So I opened them all up on Photoshop and lightened them all. On a few as well I removed stray fluff or marks to keep them images looking clean. After working on them, I got them all reprinted and began to cut them out by hand with a scalpel, metal ruler and cutting mat. This had to be one of the most tense moments during this project because I had to make sure I cut them straight and that I didn’t cut straight through the image.
After finally cutting them all out and putting them in frames with help from Clare, I used the images that were too dark to start plotting out the composition I was going to hang my images in.
I wasn’t too sure which one to go for so I called Jamie over to take a look and to ask his advice. Straight away he told me to go for this one, but to space it out a little more and fill more of my space. Give the images a solid and symmetrical structure which would reflect my Mum’s life as being quite structured because of the diabetes:
I changed around the images a bit too to achieve the composition of the second image. I decided to mix together the studio and the natural shots because each of these aspects are not separate to each other in her life, they all work together, and are all a part of her equally. The structure of the images reminded me of Damien Hirst’s Cabinet work, especially “Neverland” which was a part of the Structure and Absence Exhibition. Each of the piles of pills were certain distance from the ones next to it, above and next to. Therefore creating a very precise, structured piece.
So to achieve this with my work, I used a spirit level and kept all the measurements the concise by using a spare frame to draw out a grid for where the frames would sit. When I tried to rub out extra pencil lines, it made these specific areas shiny and they looked really bad. So I painted over my board again leaving the top two corners of the boxes id drawn visible so I could see where to place the frames. I the numbered each space and each frame to make sure I kept the correct order shown in the second image above. When hanging my images, Richard helped me out and instead of measuring with a ruler, we used a piece of paper to create an exact measurement to the centre. We also measured the length of the drop on the frame to make sure everything was in the correct place. After marking everything out, we used pins to hang the frames on. The first few, Richard did, but after I figured out what he was doing, I took over and finished it myself.
When I hung the frames onto the hooks, they weren’t quite secure enough and I was afraid that if someone bumped the board they were hanging on during the exhibition, that they would fall off. So I tried out using double sided tape to stick the bottom corners to the board, but this didn’t work because the tape was too thin and did reach to the board. So I tried sticky pads which are slightly raised, which worked perfectly and were strong enough to hold the frames to the board. They are now secure and won’t fall off with any disturbance to the surrounding areas.
