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Creating a gallery wall in your home is an exciting way to express your personal style and breathe new life into your living space. If you're looking to dive into the vibrant world of contemporary art, here are 7 tips to help you curate a stunning and cohesive gallery wall:
1. Embrace Mixed Mediums and Materials
Contemporary art is all about diversity and innovation. Start by mixing different mediums and materials. Incorporate paintings, sculptures, textiles, and photographydigital art to create a dynamic and engaging display. The contrast between various textures and forms can add depth and intrigue to your wall.
IMAGE: Aleph Contemporary Summer Exhibition
2. Play with Different Frames
Frames can significantly influence the aesthetic of your art wall. Experiment with different styles, colors, and sizes. Sleek, modern frames can highlight the art itself, while ornate or vintage frames can add a touch of character. Don't be afraid to mix and match; the diversity in frames can add to the contemporary feel.
IMAGE: Personal collection Nick and Galia Wells
3. Add Black and White for Contrast
Including black and white artworks can provide a striking contrast to more colourful pieces. This interplay of monochrome and color can create a balanced and visually appealing composition. Black and white photography, in particular, adds a timeless and sophisticated element to your art wall.
4. Showcase Works on Paper
Works on paper, such as sketches, prints, and drawings, are a fantastic addition to any contemporary art wall. They offer a delicate and often intimate glimpse into the artist's process. When framing works on paper, consider using tray frame to add a sense of space around the artwork, enhancing its presence.
IMAGE: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023
5. Integrate Personal Pieces
By combining photography, personal heirlooms and children's artwork, you create a dynamic and deeply personal artwork. This blends tells your unique story and connects the past and the present.
Antique prints can bring a sense of history and nostalgia to your display. These pieces often carry a story and can create a beautiful contrast with more modern artworks. Consider framing them in a way that highlights their vintage charm, perhaps with distressed or ornate frames that stand out against sleek, contemporary pieces.
Children's artwork is not only charming but also a wonderful way to celebrate creativity within your family. Framing these pieces professionally can elevate them, making them an integral part of your art wall rather than an afterthought. This approach can add a whimsical and heartfelt dimension to your collection.
6. Create a Balanced Composition
When arranging your art pieces, aim for a balanced composition. Start by placing larger pieces first and then fill in with smaller works. Consider the overall shape of your arrangement – whether it’s a grid, a cluster, or a linear progression. Step back and adjust as needed to ensure harmony and flow.
IMAGE: Aleph Contemporary Summer Exhibition 2024
7. Trust Your Instincts
Finally, trust your instincts and personal taste. Contemporary art is all about breaking boundaries and expressing individuality. Let your personality shine through in your selections and arrangements. The most important thing is that your art wall resonates with you and brings you joy.
TOP TIP: Before hanging the art, measure your wall and use masking tape to mark out an area the same size on the floor.Now you can lay out your artworks and try out different variations and placements before you hang them on your wall
By following these tips, you'll gain the confidence to move beyond traditional landscapes and curate a contemporary art wall that is both visually stunning and deeply personal.
Happy curating !
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In conversation with Barnie Page
5 questions on Art and InspirationWe caught up with Barnie Page, who curated the Summer Exhibition, to discuss his decade-long career in curating contemporary art. Barnie has built an impressive portfolio of independent projects that blend art with everyday life. Now residing in Stroud, he celebrates the immense local talent and the unique artistic community in the Five Valleys.
1. Aleph Contemporary (AC): You’ve been working with contemporary artists and galleries for more than 10 years – can you tell us about your career as a curator, and what inspires you?
Barnie Page (BP): Throughout my career I’ve maintained an independent practice of setting up curatorial projects, organising exhibitions, selling art, and publishing editions and books. I’m particularly interested in alternative exhibition formats and thinking about what happens when art is exhibited outside of a gallery, so many of my favourite projects have played with that friction between art and real life. For instance a year-long postcard exhibition in the window of an off licence in Elephant and Castle alongside local community classified ads; or a website that freely offers jpeg artworks to visitors to download and use as the background image on their smartphones.
2. AC:How did you select the art, and the artists, for the Summer Exhibition?
BP: I moved to Stroud in early 2020 and since then have met so many brilliant artists that I wanted this exhibition to be an opportunity to show their work and celebrate the immense talent that exists here. With an exhibition of this many artists I had to keep to a loose brief: I wanted lots of artworks but didn’t want the gallery to feel busy, so the works needed to be on the small side. I also asked that the artists submit artworks that loosely connect to theme of “summer”, if they were able. There are some works that evoke memories of summer and others that were simply made during the summer months.
3. AC: The pieces are beautifully arranged. Is there a story, or a narrative of some kind, in the hang?
BP: When planning this exhibition I kept thinking about Laurie Lee’s descriptions of summer in Cider with Rosie (famously set in the Slad Valley near Stroud), particularly the book’s very first page that vividly describes such a sensory cacophony. I combined this with my own childhood memories of summers in the West Country (going to bed when it’s still light, hay fever, eating salt and vinegar crisps in beer gardens) and I ended up laying out the exhibition loosely following the changes in light and mood throughout the chronology of a hazily-remembered summer’s day. With there being so many and such varied work I needed to work intuitively and with very little structure, so this allowed me exactly that.
4. AC:The Summer Exhibition features many local artists, and draws on the thriving community of creative practitioners who reside in Stroud and the surrounding areas. Why do you think so many have chosen to make the five valleys their home? What kind of community do artists find here?
BP: The natural beauty of the area is a big draw, there are infinite countryside walks that make it easy to get lost in the green folds of the valleys, but also it doesn’t feel remote because there are so many things happening all the time in the cafés, pubs, venues, art spaces and community spaces (never have I been anywhere where the notice boards are as full as they are here!). The rich and ongoing countercultural lineage is also hugely inspirational and shows that Stroud is a place that welcomes new ideas and alternative viewpoints, making it a fertile ground for artists.
5.AC: What does summer in Stroud mean to you?
BP: Picnics and butterfly watching at Rough Bank. Refreshing paddles in The Heavens. Picking wild plums by the River Frome. Cider at The Woolpack. The happy screams of swifts.
