Guidance on labelling your work at the Gate
Imagine going in to a high end gallery - how is work labelled there? You want to work to sell for what its worth. You want your customer to feel confident about parting with their hard-earned cash.
Some artists have chosen to hang parcel tags off their work. Your choice, but we don’t recommend this.
Labelling artwork in the Gate
Our art space is a listed building and our landlords, the city council, forbid us from attaching anything to the ancient scructure.
Perhaps there are two solutions: either attach a label to the work or print a hand-out listing titles, prices etc.
The Gate recommends
We suggest a 100 x 60mm printed label mounted on mounting board of the same size. (Hint: Pritt stick does the job.) This is suspended below the work. Perhaps using card or consider using a strip of clear acetate sheet that can be fixed to to the back of the label and to the back of the artwork using low tack tape (such as masking tape). The effect is that the label appears to float 2 or 3 cm below the work.
We recommend keeping the label simple [artist, title, date, media, price (if applicable or NFS}, and using a san serif font such as Gill Sans.
If you are a member of GCA please use the logo, and we would be delighted if everyone used the Gate logo.
We recommend avoid over-explaining, or telling the viewer what they should feel. There may be things you want to say about the work so perhaps it is best leave a sheet with those interesting stories with the stewards in case the visitor asks questions.