After my daughter’s wedding, we were left with a semi-converted barn in search of a purpose.
It is a large and pleasing space, albeit without doors or windows but with the smoothest of concrete floors and beautiful walls made of perfect lines of round river stones.
Fortunately, an idea presented itself. Every autumn, the Occitanie region organises an open day for artists’ studios. I do a little painting but the spare bedroom where I make my creations was not fit to receive visitors.
So, I thought, what about making the barn into a temporary exhibition space? How much work could it take?
First, the walls needed a thorough clean. This was once an agricultural storage space and I discovered invisible cracks with straw lodged in them from a century ago.
After I had brushed as much I could, I took an air compressor to the walls and more invisible dirt drifted down to ground level. To get to inaccessible places, I deployed a brush attached to the end of a long bamboo pole.
Filling in cracks
Doing all that made me look more closely at the walls.
There were long horizontal cracks that needed filling and sections of rotting timber beams that needed attention.
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I hacked away anything loose and filled holes with lime mortar. The last thing I needed was rubble raining down on my paintings.
Now I had to rig up the barn to display art. There are various discreet proprietary systems using nylon line on sale for hanging paintings on walls in galleries, but they are costly.
As ever, I wanted to do as much as I could myself, so I bought a kit of 30m of 3mm stainless steel wire coated in plastic intended for all-purpose outdoor use.
It is essential to have two strong anchors at either end that will not give way when the wire is tightened using the tensioners provided.
A wall display in the converted barnNick Inman
The main wall of the barn is 14m long and I was worried that even if the wire was doubled up and taut, it might sag in the middle, so I passed it through intermediary eyes set into the wall at intervals.
I could still imagine the worst – one end coming loose and everything crashing to the floor – so I decided to attach the horizontal wire to lengths of 4mm chain coming down from the beams above.
When it was time to hang the pictures I used s-shaped hooks, but I found something even better that served my purpose: z-shaped galvanised roofing hooks that were strong but still slightly pliable.
I have to confess that I made endless trips to the DIY shop for all this and learned a whole new vocabulary while I was doing it. I also found some unfamiliar but useful bits of metal that came in very handy.
Occasionally, I found myself floundering around asking for something for which I did not have the right word. Not every item in my imagination, it seems, can be described in wild gestures.
Gradually I assembled my own wire and chain glossary, which may be of help to you.
Fortunately, cable is câble and chain is chaîne, but you may also need to know tendeur de cable (cable tensioner), piton à oeil à visser (an eye that screws into the wall), pince de cable or serre-cable (wire rope clamp/tie) and the ever-useful mousqueton (carabiner or snap hook) and maillon – which looks like and serves as the link of a chain, opening and closing by means of a screw barrel.
With these last two, take note: unless otherwise specified, they are not intended to take the weight of a person – only relatively light objects.
What’s that? Did the pictures all fall down? Thankfully, no. I have done three annual exhibition days now without mishaps, receiving more than 150 satisfied visitors each time. My elaborate DIY preparations certainly paid off.
