Selecting and Presenting Your Work So you have taken your photographs and now you need to cull down to the photographs that best represent your idea and are the most technically correct. You will need to consider:

A. What is it I am trying to communicate? B. Can I communicate this further by the way I group and arrange works? C. Will size (scale) affect the meaning of my work? D. What is the best print surface for my work and will that enhance the meaning in my work? E. How much space is available for me to exhibit my work? F. What is the budget for printing? G. What equipment (screens/sound/light tables/plinths/display tables) is available to me for presenting my work

Here is some information to help you: Printing budget: Some printing methods and materials are more expensive than others. The larger the print, the more expensive it is. Equipment: a gallery has some equipment that you may use to present your work (if it is not already being used elsewhere in the gallery). These items may include:

Light box tables

Digital screens

Plinths (made from mdf. Can be painted)

Display tables, which can become a vitrine with a Perspex cover.

Data projector, speakers, headphones (if you want to include sound)

Track lighting

The gallery will sometimes pin works on paper directly to the wall

Works on metal or mounted on foam core can have hanging systems applied to the back

Gallery stock frames. Wall space: some artists will have more wall space than others depending on the type of work for exhibition. Photographic print surfaces: if you had your work printed locally at Horsham Colour Pro (HCPro) you are able to have your work printed on these surfaces:

Metal

Rag paper

Fabric (only certain types of fabric are able to be printed at HCPro)

Matt paper

Gloss paper

Metallic paper (the paper has a silver pearlescent surface. A cheaper alternative to metal printing)

Perspex

Wood (like plywood)

You may want to make a magazine that people take away with them. Something like this could be printed and constructed at a commercial printers.

Education Resource

The physical presence of your work: Here are some examples of how curators and artists have used layout and scale of work to affect the meaning and the way an audience approaches the work. Here are some examples of different presentations of photographic/lens based works exhibited at the Horsham Regional Art Gallery (HRAG). Tracey Moffat – Constructed Narratives exhibition HRAG 2017 Tracey Moffat uses photography and film. This work is laid out to be read from left to right and tells a story like a storyboard for a film. There is also a rhythm created with the eye moving up and down. The photographs are very shiny and the colours hyper real to give the feeling of a film/screen.

Chen Wei – The Club exhibition HRAG 2017 The frames are the same colour as the wall reducing the barriers between the viewer and the artwork. Chen Wei presents his work in different scales and formats. He has used a light box here to present an image of the entrance to a nightclub, the light glowing from within (literally!).

Chen Wei’s large images are placed closely together. They are separate images/scenes but by placing them close together, Chen has used the composition of lighting effects in the images to create one large work.

Chen Wei produced some of his work with pigment that glowed under UV light. It was presented as a magazine (object) that people could take with them from the exhibition. It was laid out on plinths.

Chen Wei presented some of his work on a display table laid flat between three pieces of Perspex. The viewer looks at the work from above and the work can be layered.

Jane Brown – Black Ships exhibition HRAG 2017 The work is presented in a line. Using the space available, it wraps around the wall. There are spaces between groups of images – the images presented in a landscape format and images presented within a circle. The viewer follows the work from left to right, reading the images like a travel diary (Jane Brown took these photographs on a trip to Japan).

Anthony Pelchen - Pushing the Sky exhibition HRAG 2016 Pelchen often uses grids in his art practice. In this presentation of his work the photographs are laid out in a cross formation. Pelchen also included a woven painting, which has a visual appearance of a grid in this exhibition.

James Guerts – Pushing the Sky exhibition HRAG 2016 The lines in Guerts’ photographs are at the same level when pinned to the wall. As an artist he has needed to consider the scale of two works and how they sit together.

Kelly Koumalatsos – Pushing the Sky exhibition HRAG 2016 Koumalatsos is an indigenous artist and has appropriated historical photographs of aboriginal people wearing possum skin cloaks. She has screen-printed the images onto a blanket. Blankets like this one were given to aboriginal people during the settlement of Australia. These blankets were often the cause of disease and early death amongst aboriginal people. Koumalatsos uses the blanket as a device to give additional meaning to her work. It is hung in a way that almost invites the viewer to wear it, or to be enveloped in it.

Janina Green – Centre for Contemporary Photography touring exhibition 2016 A selection of Green’s work from different series so not all work is printed and presented in the same way. Some are framed, others are pinned, some has a white border and they are not all the same scale. The groupings and spaces within the works affect how the viewer moves through the exhibition and allows “breathing space” between different ideas.

Derek Kreckler – Perth Institute of Contemporary Art touring exhibition 2016 These images are from the same series but printed at a different scale. There are close ups of subjects and images that have a wide viewpoint. The different scales, viewpoints and layout create rhythm and movement, similar to the artists’ subject of waves crashing on the shore. Notice there is still order within the layout, with edges of photographs aligning, and the distance between works the same.

Simone Slee – You Carry it With You exhibition HRAG 2013 The series of photographs by Simone Slee are printed to a large scale on a surface that is used for billposters. The images are glued to a false wall creating an object rather than a two-dimensional work. Gluing the work also removes its’ preciousness.

You Carry it with You exhibition HRAG 2013 Using shelves attached to wall and projecting images onto a wall. The data projector becomes a part of the work.

Daniel Von Sturmer – Transit exhibition 2012 Von Sturmer has a very slick use of data projectors and a custom made screen. The objects he uses to project his work is just as important as the images.

Pat Brassington – ARebours ACCA touring exhibition HRAG 2014 This exhibition was a survey of work over 32 years. Artworks are different scales and from different series. The curator has considered groupings and how different scales of work relate with each other.

Pat Brassington – ARebours ACCA touring exhibition HRAG 2014 Groupings of work can use the corners of the room. The way they are laid out can create directional arrows drawing the viewer’s attention to other works. Consider this when looking at your own series of artwork. Is there one image that you would like to draw attention to?

Southbank exhibition HRAG 2012 This exhibition was about the new residential areas of Horsham. Photographs are laid out in a tight grid creating one large work. Some work was reproduced on cheap newsprint as a magazine referencing real estate marketing material. The magazines were laid out in a grid and viewers could take them away.