Insight 26: Difficulties with Salon Hangs

In my first year of exhibiting this body of sculptural work, I discovered how much could change between leaving the studio and finding the work on display. The jellyfish were an early lesson. In some art shows, appropriate plinths were limited, the works were positioned too low, and the lighting did very little for them. I knew how they could look, so seeing them in those conditions was a surprise. How much of what made them compelling would survive the way someone else displayed them?

Mind you, they still won the prizes.

Pic above: Irony Specimen: Lion's Mane, winner 3D prize ASPIR Phillip Island 2025.

That is part of the complication. The jellyfish could attract recognition while losing qualities I considered important to the encounter. In good lighting, the resin forms are luminous, and their translucency is a substantial part of their appeal. Put a lot of visual noise behind them and that benefit can disappear. In a salon hang, where many artists’ works are displayed close together, I cannot assume that mine will have a quiet background or sit beneath a spotlight. A sculpture whose presence depends on illumination is vulnerable before anyone has even approached it.

Crowding adds another pressure. There is very little breathing space, and unless a work is independently loud through its size, composition or colour, it can get lost among its neighbours. The salon shows I have entered have varied enormously. Some have been in professional galleries with good lighting, where the presentation looked considered despite the density. Others have involved wire mesh walls covered in sheets or hessian, with limited spotlighting. Some have been dreadful. “Salon hang” describes a crowded arrangement, but it tells me very little about the actual conditions my sculpture will receive.

My practical response has become to expect the worst when choosing what to enter. If the work needs a particular condition to show its strengths, I need to know whether that condition will be available.

Learning what those conditions were took exhibition experience. At Meeniyan, I had already been quite specific about installation requirements, yet the Brittle Stars panels had less immediacy than they did in my home or studio. These are sculptural panels of small marine forms arranged in specimen-like grids. In a different-sized room, with different ceiling heights and surrounding work, their relationship to the space changed. It took me a while to understand why. Hang height was an important factor: higher on the wall, the arrangement read more as a decorative field; lower, it recovered the sense of looking into a specimen display. Subsequent installations benefited from prescribing that height, alongside clearer guidance about lighting.

That experience gave me something I could communicate. A short document explaining which works benefit from lighting and specifying height parameters has made a huge difference in gallery installations. It also clarified how much I was handing over whenever the placement was outside my control. The work’s requirements did not disappear because the exhibition had another way of organising its space.

Then there is the physical vulnerability of sculpture, which has become a much firmer limit for me. I have arrived at drop-offs and seen sculptures put on the floor. My fragile work is not suited to that handling environment, and discovering this was another shock.

Even moving the work after I have left needs instructions. My domes can only be picked up from their bases. Some larger sculptures are top-heavy, and the tall totems come in two pieces and need to be kept upright, not laid down. I now stick labels on the works explaining how to pick them up and move them. These are practical details I know through making and handling each piece, but somebody else cannot be expected to know them just by looking. Leaving a sculpture at an exhibition means preparing for what might happen to it before it reaches its final position, or if it needs to be moved again.

Those labels address handling by the people responsible for the exhibition. Once it opens, there is another concern: whether there is enough supervision to prevent visitors touching and lifting the work.

The sea anemones have made that painfully concrete. They are made in two parts, with a removable lid, and I have repeatedly watched people pick them up and turn them over. Why they pick them up, I don’t know. The lid falls off. I have seen this happen over and over, so when I collected an anemone after a show and found all its tips broken off, I recognised the likely sequence immediately. I had not witnessed that particular breakage, but I had watched the behaviour that could produce it.

People can be darn rude around sculpture. Wanting to touch something does not make it theirs to pick up.

This has changed what I am willing to submit. Fragile sculptures no longer go into exhibitions unless I am confident about the circumstances in which they will be handled and shown. Better lighting instructions can address a display problem; they cannot, on their own, address what happens when somebody lifts the work while no one is watching.

I would generally prefer to avoid salon presentation for much of my sculpture, although prize exhibitions remain a reason to consider it. The decision now depends on the particular work and what I know about the show. The jellyfish taught me that a work can win recognition while its material qualities are diminished. The panels showed me that identifying and communicating a requirement can improve the encounter. The damaged anemone established a boundary around what I will entrust to an uncertain environment. Handing over control now begins with deciding whether that particular sculpture should be handed over at all.

Related Insight 04: What Changed When the Work Left the Studio.