The gallery wall that is not a grid

Two ways to put eleven pictures on a wall. One is a grid, which requires eleven pictures of the same size and reads as decoration. The other is an arrangement, which works with anything and reads as a collection. The difference between them is a single rule.

The rule

Keep the gaps between frames constant and let the frames be whatever they are. Five to eight centimetres between works of ordinary size, a little more if the frames are heavy. The eye reads the consistent gap as the order in the arrangement, and once it has found that order it accepts every difference in size, colour and subject.

The moment the gaps vary, the eye starts trying to align edges instead, and any misalignment becomes the thing you see.

Treat the group as one object

Draw the outline of the whole group on paper first. A rectangle is calm. A stepped or cross shape is livelier and harder. Whatever the outline is, it should be deliberate, because a group with a ragged edge on three sides looks like it grew rather than like it was hung, and the difference is visible from the doorway.

The method that avoids forty holes

• Lay the whole arrangement on the floor in front of the wall and move it until it is right. Photograph it.
• Cut paper templates the size of each frame and tape them to the wall with the same gaps.
• Live with the paper for two days. Almost every arrangement changes on the second evening.
• Mark the hanging point on each template: measure from the top of the frame down to the wire under tension, and transfer that.
• Hang from the middle outwards, not from a corner. Errors accumulate towards the edge where they are least visible.

What to hang together

One thing has to be shared, and only one. It can be the frame, the palette, the subject, the medium or the period. If everything is shared, the wall is a set and is dull. If nothing is shared, it is a noticeboard.

The most reliable version is a shared frame treatment across completely unrelated works. It is why so many good collections are in identical narrow oak or blackened wood: the frame is doing the work of the rule, and the pictures are free to be anything.