02 Sep 2008

We made a good start yesterday. All the photographs have now been delivered to the gallery space, and the Art and Object Handling Team have got them ready to hang, with all the fixings in place. The Design Studio have prepared detailed layouts of where everything should go - Dewar, the Design Studio Manager, has annotated the plans with all the relevant dimensions for each wall so that the Collections Display Technicians, Liz and Richard, know where to put the graphic panels. It looks incredibly complicated - lots of numbers - but it'll help the Art and Object Handling Team to get on with hanging the photographs as quickly as possible. We've been arranging the photographs into their relevant sections to make life easier. It's lovely to see the framed photographs 'in the flesh' now, and seeing them on the walls will be even better! So far today, the high-level graphics have gone up - they're vinyl titles on the wall which tell people which geographical area the photographs are from - as well as most of the graphic panels, which have the exhibition text. We haven't noticed any mistakes yet, but I've looked at the text so many times that I don't think I'd see them anymore anyway. We were a bit worried that the blue vinyl titles looked pale on the wall, but a judicious tweaking of the lights seems to have overcome that problem. Beside the Seaside is starting to take shape, finally, after all the months of planning. Image removed. The graphic panels go up on the walls and the colours are checked against swatches Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the labels are being prepared. They've all been written and edited, and Cathy, the graphic designer, will be making sure that they fit on the template we've got. We may yet have to cut some words out, which will be painful, but that's yet to come...