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Besides seeing Coldplay, most of the day was spent at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  I love the V&A.

I love the architecture of the building.

The drama in the foyer.  But most of all I love the art.  I visit this Museum every time I’m in London, and I never get enough of it  I am seriously envious of those living in the area who can visit on a regular basis.

“The links between contemporary design, history and the imagination form the background for this beautiful and unprecedented exploration of design art.”

The Telling Tales exhibit runs through October 18th.  If you’re in the area, go see it.  It’s free, as is admission to the Museum, and it’s provocative.

The designers are primarily from the Netherlands and most are under 40 years of age. The work showcases furniture in the spirit of story telling, something also being described as “design art.” Objects included The Honeycomb Vase made in a hive by a swarm of bees that built their honeycomb over a wire frame provided by the designer.  A chair that rotates around a central axis to stretch one chair into another.  The chairs are cast in bronze and uses digitally designed embroidered upholstery.  A huge skull called “Senosry Deprivation Skull” made of fibreglass and sheepskin.  It opens and provides a space for “introspection and medition” or “a place to get inside of your head.”  I found myself absorbing the art prior to recognizing the form’s function.

There are three sections to the exhibit. “The Forest Glade is inspired by fantasy and nature evoking the spirit of fairytales. The Enchanted Castle exaggerates and parodies historical design styles often associated with displays of status. Heaven and Hell is concerned with themes of mortality and the afterlife.”

It was the Heaven and Hell exhibit that particularly grabbed me.  …”works that evoke the universal conflict of life and death, heaven and hell, judgement and salvation … agitated designs that explore our anxious state in troubled times.”  It is in this exhibit where the huge skull sits.  I found myself stuck on “Buildings of Disaster,” pondering the inclusion of certain buildings.

Intrigued?  Learn more about the exhibit here. While photography isn’t allowed in the exhibit (it is allowed nearly everyplace else in the Museum), you can view all of the works from the exhibit, including a description of each.

A new area we discovered is the Theatre and Performance galleries.  Then we learned it was opened earlier this year.  It includes costumes, posters, photographs, and various ephemera related to the performance arts.  Above are costumes worn by Mick Jagger, Adam Ant, and Jimmy Page.  I suspect you can guess who wore what.

The above two images are a  replica of Kylie Minogues’s Wembley dressing room for the Showgirl: Homecoming tour 2007.

A close-up of the work in a stage costume.

A full version of that costume.
The V&A’s website has an excellent guided tour of stage costuming selected from the collection which “demonstrate the art and expertise of the theatre designs and costume makers.”  You can view it here.

A Peter Townshend broken guitar.

A very happy me!

Next up, some images of London at night.

I’ve a thing for clocks!  The above clock that is in front of the Dali Museum has found its way into several of my quilts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Art/Design, Photos - UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.