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How to finish, attach and hang painted figure cutouts on a wall?

Dear metal finishing professionals.

I'm an artist about to work on a painting of a group of almost life size people. Each person needs to be individually cut out from a sheet of aluminum (imagine cutting your picture out of a group photo), then they need to overlap with about an inch of space between (depth), connected together into one final piece (welded, glued, bolted, or something better) and then hung on a wall with also about an inch of space behind the whole thing. When finished, the piece would look like a group of people (only waist up) standing in front of the wall. It would have actual depth to it, with some figures in the foreground and others in the mid or background, overlapping, in up to four layers. The connecting method needs to be such that they can be individually painted first, then connected, thus I think it would be best to attach the mechanism before painting begins as I wouldn't want the painted front surface to be damaged in the process.

It seems that there are three possible coating systems available (anodizing, chromate conversion coating, or powder coating). I'd like to ask several questions, if possible. First, which of the three systems do you think would work best with acrylic and/or oil or alkyd paints? I assume the aluminum sheet will have to be cut to the actual shape before finishing. Can the attachment mechanism be welded onto the back of treated aluminum, or should the said mechanism be attached before the individual pieces are coated? Is there a way of welding bolts to the back of the front piece, that with the help of plastic spacers and nuts could be attached to the midground and finally background pieces? Or is there a better way, that would make the whole piece sturdy yet light enough to hang on a wall? Finally, roughly how much would a dozen life-size waist-up figures weigh, and is there a system to hang all that on a wall? This is for me the first work of its kind, so I am weighing the possibilities. The alternative is to go with thin plywood, but my guess is that would be ultimately heavier, less elegant and less durable.

Thank you for your time and I'll be grateful for any answers you could give me to these questions.

Peter Kovalik
artist - Toronto, Ontario, Canada
February 19, 2009