Exhibitions are a great way to showcase your paintings, but they don't happen by themselves. A lot of work takes place to plan and build the two major exhibitions we hold every year. This year (2009) Christine Temple and Mary Atherton decided to make a photographic diary of the work involved in building the Spring exhibition.

Building begins at 9 o-clock in the morning when the exhibition equipment, frames, stands, lights, advertising, etc., are moved from the StudIo to Altrincham College of Art, a journey of about 3 miles. Two transit van journeys are required to transport everything needed, and there's a lot of competition amongst the members to be one of the two people allowed to go under the stage at the Studio to recover the equipment (oh no there isn't! Ed.)

Once assembled at the College, the stands are positioned and assembled according to The Master Plan. This has been done a few times now, so the master plan is probably burned into several peoples' brains. The last few exhibitions have benefited from the addition of stand lighting designed and built by Mike Harrison and Harry Smith. This helps to remove the variations in lighting due to the distribution of the hall's lights. There's always the small frisson of fear as the lights are turned on for the first time; are they going to work? Of course, they always do (well, nearly always).

Once the stands are assembled, the pictures are hung. This can be one of the hardest tasks as there are about 200 paintings of various size to be artfully placed on the available space. Pride of place is, of course, reserved for the prize winners, runners up and commended works.

Finally, the pay-off, the offical opening. The ceremony is usually well attended, so lots of people see the prizes and certificates handed out by the Guest of Honour.

Photographs by Mary Atherton and Christine Temple, words by Tom Russell

Consulting The Master Plan

Handing in

Hmmm, does that go there ok?

Hanging the Winners

The finished item

Opening evening

I declare this exhibition ...