From Paste to Exhibition: Installing Hurrah for Shippam's
- lswilliams40
- Aug 5
- 4 min read
By Rachel Ng, Exhibitions and Collections Officer
It’s finally here! Hurrah for Shippam’s install.
Exhibition changeover at The Novium Museum is always the best part of my job. It’s the time where all of the work we’ve done materialises into a product that can be viewed and enjoyed by our visitors.
In the lead up to the installation, lots of preparations were made to make sure everything ran smoothly. Our Collections Officer, Amy, and our University of Brighton placement student, Lucy, spent hours getting objects out of boxes and completing object movement forms. These forms allow us to keep track of where objects are in the museum and we use them to update our collections management system, Modes.
We have worked hard on liaising with external suppliers to ensure we have all the elements needed for the exhibition. This has included the graphic production company who produced all of the vinyls, panels and object labels that you can see in the exhibition. Hurrah for Shippam’s has over 200 graphic elements of varying shapes and sizes so coordinating this between our external designers, us and the graphic production company took a lot of organisation! To ensure we were all on the same page, I created a big spreadsheet containing information about what material the piece was to be printed on, the size of it, where it was being installed and a picture of it. For this exhibition we have worked with a graphic production company that is B-Corp registered and all of the content is printed on cardboard, or PVC-free vinyl that is fully recyclable.
I also needed to ensure we had the correct materials and equipment for the install, such as mounts for objects to go on and the correct audio-visual equipment (iPads, stands and televisions).
I Grew Up 80s was The Novium Museum’s previous headline exhibition. This closed on 8th June 2025 and we deinstalled the content from this exhibition in 2 days. Once the objects had left the gallery, our attention turned to repainting the space ready for Hurrah for Shippam’s.
We used the Shippam’s advertising archive as inspiration for the wall colours and we narrowed it down to 5: red, blue, yellow, pink and green.
Each wall colour has been chosen by the section of the exhibition and the design of the panels. For example, the advertising section has red walls, and the panels feature red titles and designs.
Once the gallery was painted, we allowed the walls to ‘off-gas’ for 48 hours. This allows any gases from the paint to be released and disseminate to reduce the risk that they will deteriorate the objects going in cases.
The first day of install consisted of graphic install. This is when we really started to see Hurrah for Shippam’s take shape. The design of the exhibition panels was carefully considered and inspiration was taken from the advertising archive. All of the shapes on the panels were directly taken from adverts and each of the slogan titles were taken from catchy Shippam’s taglines or newspaper articles.
Following this, we started object install. We had a clear idea of what objects we were putting where but the precise layout of each case is something we worked out on the day. We started by gathering all of the objects for that specific case and the object labels. We then thought about their display requirements considered each layout option. We think about which mounts best support and display objects and how we ensure deterioration doesn’t take place whilst on display.
We work with art technicians who hang all of the 2-D works on the walls.
Once all of the objects were in, we worked on the finer details such as installing all of the audio-visual elements, adding in the interactive elements such as drawers and smell boxes and hanging the feedback boards.
Once everything is in place, each picture is levelled perfectly and the cases and gallery are sparkling clean, we do press photography for marketing purposes.
Then comes the exciting and scary part… the private launch! We host private launches of exhibitions to allow stakeholders in the exhibition see it first. We invited people who have worked on the project, including oral history participants, volunteers, filmmakers and councillors. Guests were of course offered a fish, meat or vegetable paste sandwich to really get into the Shippam’s mindset before visiting the exhibition!
It’s always a bit nerve-wrecking to finally release something you’ve been working on for the past 2 years to the world, but it is always very rewarding when you get good feedback and see it being enjoyed by visitors.
Shippam’s has been part of Chichester for over 200 years and their legacy still runs deep throughout the city. Hurrah for Shippam’s hopefully goes someway to preserve the impact of the business whilst capturing memories from the people that worked there and found a sense of belonging within the company.
It has been a pleasure and privilege to work on the project and finally being able to see people interact with the exhibition, reminisce and, for some, discover Shippam’s for the very first time.
If you would like to hear more about curating Hurrah for Shippam's, please come along to The Making of an Exhibition talk on 21 August 2025 at The Novium Museum. For more information and tickets, please follow the link The Making of an Exhibition.
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