HAL THE HANGMAN

I’m sure that Hal who has been responsible for installing our art hanging system isn’t really called Hal the Hangman but that’s how we keep referring to him. He did the hard yakka putting the tracking system in before we went away but at that stage, we hadn’t unpacked our art boxes, let along decided which pieces we wanted to keep.

We did a certain amount of culling before we left Melbourne but haven’t been able to resist adding to our collection since returning to Perth. Having a ‘system’ means that we can change work over when we get bored or (in my case) need to match the art to my seasonal doona covers. Towards the end of November, Hal was going to come back to start hanging work so we had to both sort out walls and be brutal  about what art we still wanted to keep looking at. There was the colourful nude I’d had for decades but was that enough time to live with it? And the sketches that a stranger had done as we sat on a deserted Port Fairy beach during COVID – did we really need to look at ourselves every day? And of course, over the years, some frames have broken/photos faded/art lost its charm so a charity shop is going to have an interesting collection to sell very soon.

We’ve managed to get the bedrooms and studies and half the passage done but Hal will have to come back to complete his work because even with the culling, we have more pieces than he had cords. In the meantime, the hallway is starting to look like a rather quirky art gallery.