Poster
Forty Thousand Horsemen, a film focusing on Australian Light Horse’s Palestine campaign in World War I, was released in 1940. The film struck a chord with many everyday citizens at a time when their country was at war, breaking ticket sale records and proving popular both in Australia and overseas. Evidence of the film’s success can still be seen in the form of posters and other ephemera collected by institutions throughout Australia. In March 2013 International Conservation Services was contacted about one such poster hanging in the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington, NSW. The project raised a range of complications which required intricate preparation, planning and multi-disciplinary collaboration: • Location: the poster was located in a confined space, just outside of the main theatre, with difficult access and poor lighting • Size: the poster was very large, overall measuring approximately 1920 x 1880mm and composed of six separate panels • Condition: the poster was in a poor and fragile state, with surface damage, tears, losses and stains. There were also multiple ad-hoc repairs which had been made over the years using a range of different adhesives This poster outlines the successful removal of a Forty Thousand Horsemen poster from a wall, and its subsequent treatment and storage, highlighting the benefits of working across conservation departments to find solutions.