Need fast and easy way to hang show.

My wife has a two day show coming up in two weeks. She has to hang 80 16x20 full bleed prints on Friday and break it down on Monday. I'm wondering if there are any quick and dirty methods this can be achieved without making any significant material purchases. The images are 16x20 full bleed without any matting or backing material, just the prints.

The simple answer is do you want the prints after the show ? If yes then they need framing or flush mounting on decent board. If no, just use blue-tack or drawing pins, very quick & dirty.

80 prints is a lot to frame and also costly. You could use spray mount and mount on foam-board, or get a lab to dry mount them for you.

Ian

Planning?

I hope that there is a better planning process under way if you two have thoughts of kids in your future. How do you have 80 16x20's kicking around and never look to how to hang them?

Bled mount is the challenge. Bordens spray adhesive and faomcore is a chaep short term mount option that will accomodated bled mounts.

I have a stable of window mount over foam core in standard window sizes. The foam core has a small washer taped on the back 3" from the top and the hinge side of the matt. This lets it hang on a wall with a hook or a small nail.

The matt hinge goes on with self gummed linen tape. The print gets taped down with scotch magic tape, and the matt stuck to the foam coare with loops of magic tape; more loops for the larger sizes.

These get recycled frequently; just pry the tape up, and stick a new print down.

There is a Contemporary Photography Gallery in St. Louis that does an excellent job of hanging shows. True, they usually are better planned and are up for longer periods of time, but I love to see the various ways they install shows with unmounted prints. I have seen them use very nice silver straight pins directly into the wall. That looked nice and did minimal damage to the print. There was some curling in the prints on the edges, but the focus was definitely on the print, not the presentation. My favorite was when they nailed in nails with very large heads flush into the wall where the corners of the prints would be. Then they used simple magnets to attach the prints to the wall. No damage to prints but a lot of damage to the wall.

David Ward recently displayed his exhibition between metal cables using crodocile clips to hold each corner of each print..

http://www.into-the-light.com/system/assets/557

In your case, you may have to mount small tabs to each corner with water soluble take (most frame stores will have some) so that you can clip the prints to. Then again, if the prints will be mounted at some point, the edges will be covered so don't worry..

hi

when i was involved with an art gallery years ago,
there was a very quick and dirty way to hang a show.
it required matboard, and glass ( or plexi ) and wall-mounts
that held the top and bottom of the glass.
i have no idea what kind of wall you need to hang onto, or if this is an option.
it was the cost of glass ( you can buy glass by the case from a glass or framing shop )
and the board ( same thing, case of board could be a discount for 32x40 sheets )
and the mounts.

good luck ..

john

Push-pin them to the wall -- easiest and cheapest.

Use the heavy-duty black paper clips from a stationary store and use push pins to hold the clips to the wall. Clip one on each bottom corner to get them to hang down straight if needed.

Vaughn

Whatever method you use to attach them to the wall, the two most important tools you can have in the show-hangers' arsenal are A: a laser level, and B: 25' tape measure.

The laser level should not replace the largest spirit level you can buy, they aren't expensive, extremely useful when hanging large exhibitions.

Ian

Ian- large spirit levels are good, especially for levelling an individual photo. However, when you need to draw a level line across a 30' wall, there isn't a spirit level made that will help with that. Spirit levels are also a challenge when the wall isn't perfectly flat.

Saganich said:

My wife has a two day show coming up in two weeks. She has to hang 80 16x20 full bleed prints on Friday and break it down on Monday. I'm wondering if there are any quick and dirty methods this can be achieved without making any significant material purchases. The images are 16x20 full bleed without any matting or backing material, just the prints.

Click to expand...

I don't wish to sound negative but you guys are in for a lot of work, if you are not experienced at hanging shows.

First you don't mention how much wall space you have to hang photos in but I assume it must be fairly substantial since you mentioned 80 - 16x20 prints.

As for framing, what John said, frameless hanging kits are about as cheap as it gets but allows you to display full bleed prints.

Borderless prints are a PITA and will need to be attached to a support. Going forward I would not produce borderless prints since they don't handle well and are difficult to display.

I would suggest having a center line of about 58 to 62 inches from the floor to measure off of. Since all of the prints are the same size you will probably wish to avoid clustering.

Also if you only have two days display time, is this really going to be worth the effort?

Since you sound inexperienced, two people hanging 80 prints is going to take you a lot of time. Be prepared to work a long day, don't obsess over perfect arrangement (unless someone else is curating) have all of the tools and hanger parts there ready to go, water, caffeine and a lot of patience.

Just some thoughts.

Rare earth magnets

I went to a show a couple of months ago at the SPAO here in Ottawa. One artist had his prints held onto mat board by using 8 little rare earth magnets (4 in front, 4 in back). His work was contained in frames, though.

Conceivably one could hang unframed work (print and matboard) by trapping a strong thread behind the 2 upper magnets (those magnets are strong) and hanging it all on a pin in the wall. The clean metallic look of the magnets has a certain appeal in the right setting.

TheFlyingCamera said:

Ian- large spirit levels are good, especially for levelling an individual photo. However, when you need to draw a level line across a 30' wall, there isn't a spirit level made that will help with that. Spirit levels are also a challenge when the wall isn't perfectly flat.

Click to expand...

That's why I'd suggest both, and a good long piece of string.

Ian

That is a huge amount of work and expense for just two days.

I would be reluctant to mount them in a rush especially if you are not good at it because you will probably foul up some of the prints in the process.

I suppose that spray adhesive on foam-cor could work although even Foam-cor is not completely flat at 16x20 and tends to be slightly curled. Think Masonite might work for a backing board.

I assume you are not concerned about the prints being stolen or marred. If you are handy, you could build a picture ledge with long pieces of dimensional lumbar, i.e. a 1x4, screwed to the face of a 1x2 maple screwed to the wall. You could make it up to 16 feet long, or cut in 4-8 foot sections and then just set the prints on top of the ledge which would save a lot of time trying to center and level individual prints. The larger piece of wood serves as a lip to hold the print, but that could be a problem for borderless prints.

I agree with the other posts. If you are going to display prints, don't make borderless prints.

You don't say what the walls are like... drywall; plywood; brick or whatever material. That is an important consideration. If the walls are made out of the first two materials, I would suggest push-pins - white or clear. You really don't have a lot of time to get fancy or involved.
A method we used at the former ZONE Art Center for prints was a foam-core backing, the print and glass. We used different methods for attaching this set up to the walls: L-screws; L-nails or drywall screws (this last method was touchy and you had to be real careful!). I just took down a show of a local photog (at the Valley Photo Center) where we used this method with L-screws. His work looked nice presented this way.
For a center line, I use 56" from the floor. I have been using this measurement for over 30 years. 60" is way too high as a lot of people will see reflections of the lighting system in the top part of the print.
And a final bit of advice... think of the exhibit as a three way conversation between the photog/artist, the curator and the viewer. As in any conversation there are sentences, pauses, exclamation points and such. Don't machine gun the prints all in a row, evenly spaced all along the wall. It can get visually tiring. Group the prints, vary the spacing... make an interesting conversation.
Good luck and let us know how the show went (post pics please).

gene