I’ve been thinking about ways to present my work beyond the usual framed or unframed, spurred on by the forthcoming Moseley Exchange exhibition. I’d like to do something inspired by the way the photos are taken – through a tube made of cardboard and gaffer tape – so on Sunday I stocked up on the black stuff and made a frame.

It’s definitely a prototype, hovering in that uncomfortable place between scruffy and smart and not feeling quite right yet, but I’m happy with how it came out and what I learned in the process.

Here’s snaps of the build so you can see where I’m coming from:

An 8×8 print is fixed to the middle of a 10×10 piece of double-thick cardboard.

Inch-wide strips to go around the edge.

Cover the strips in duct tape and fix them to back of the board. The print is overlapped by the strips but not stuck with tape.

Trim, corner and display.

It looks fine but it doesn’t look as WTF as the contraption does. The thing is I want it to be worth paying extra for (since I’m making these by hand and each one will be unique) but not distract from the image itself. Right now it looks more like packaging than a frame.

Maybe using different materials for the base and frame and using the tape to bring it all together in a hackery sort of way might work. I’d better start scouring the suburban skips…

Update

In the comments Rill has suggested a different approach which has me intrigued. Slightly sunken frames resembling boxes. Here’s her sketch:

I may well mock one up.