What a palaver getting tickets for this exhibition, even though we are members of the V&A. Don’t get me started. But once Janie gets started with a mission to get something, she can be quite tenacious and I can sometimes help.
Anyway, one thing led to another and we scored a pair of tickets for 8:00 a.m. on the last Saturday of the show. Here’s the trailer for those who would like to know more about it:
Janie was keen to take pictures, undaunted by the professional pictures on the website and the beautiful Epic Iran book, which naturally we procured on exit:
The headline picture and those below are a few of Janie’s own efforts as we went around the show.
The scope of the exhibition was awe-inspiring – from the earliest civilisations to modern Iranian arts and culture.
This was the first cultural event that we have attended since the start of the pandemic. It occurred to me, as my head started to spin with the mental energy required to take it all in and the sensory stimulation from all those extraordinary exhibits, that we should have “warmed up” for such a momentous exhibition.
We wouldn’t have gone straight back to the tennis court and played a five-set epic as our first match back, would we? So perhaps we should have warmed up for Epic Iran by looking at a smaller, more familiar collection first. Twenty minutes in the MCC Museum during the Lord’s test match for example.
But I digress.
Epic Iran was a truly superb exhibition.
I wanted to try and bargain for the above carpet, but the owner was nowhere to be found. I should really complain to the V&A authorities about that.
Meanwhile Janie, being more sensible than me, made a bee-line for the V&A shop, snapping up a copy of the beautiful Epic Iran book at a member/attendee price before the exhibition closed and stocks ran out.
On the way home, Janie was still in the mood for sensory stimulation, so asked me to stop in Hyde Park briefly so she could see this year’s Serpentine Pavilion construction.
Counterspace
All that culture and still we were home before noon. Not bad for our first cultural outing since the start of the pandemic.
Ahead of time, I hadn’t thought about the irony of the V&A, perhaps the most labyrinthine of all UK museums, having a special display of photographs from the labyrinthine streets of a sprawling Middle-Eastern city such as Cairo.
But that irony was soon brought to the forefront of my mind as we tried and failed to find that Cairo Streets display. Two attempts at the information desk later (including one incident during which Janie and I also mislaid each other), the informed conclusion was that the display in question has been delayed and is not there yet. We have until April 2020 to find it, if indeed it ever shows up.
The irony continued as we asked the kind woman at the information desk to direct us to the Laughing Matters Exhibition and she advised us to go to the third floor, pointing to a nearby staircase & lift.
After wandering what there is of the third and much of that end of the V&A’s second floor in vain, we asked a walkie-talkie-bearing attendant, who admitted to being clueless, but he could and did use his walkie-talkie to radio for help.
“First Floor”, came the garbled instruction from the walkie-talkie, “tell them to walk the British Renaissance 16th and 17th century and they can’t miss it”. We had walked that way before, of course, on previous visits. A bit too Mock Tudor for me, that 16th century section.
Anyway, we did reach Laughing Matters, which we couldn’t miss. Quite a small display, it is. I suppose there aren’t that many artefacts that can be deemed to be quintessentially British Comedy.
The Spitting Image of Mrs Thatcher was a highlight…that’s Mrs T in the display cabinet, not on the phone. Janie (on the phone) was listening to some of the many vox coms (voice of comedians) on such phones in the centre of the room. Some very interesting, many rather mundane. Also around the room were many quintessentially British comedy clips, such as “don’t tell him, Pike”, “don’t mention the war” and Babs Windsor’s bikini-boob-bursting scene from Carry On Camping. No mention of NewsRevue. Tish.
Can you get me a cab a bit sooner than that? I need to get out of here.
The one place in the V&A that Janie does know how to find without a map or a personal guide is the member’s cafe. That was to be our next stop.
Janie fancied some soupy, creamy courgettes, while I just nibbled some nuts with my tea – oooer, missus.
The one performance thing we fancied was a performance piece, in the new Hochhauser auditorium, named Within The Warren, a piece which heaped irony upon irony by satirising the labyrinthine nature of the V&A’s culture. I have oft suggested that organisational cultures tend to reflect some intrinsic element of the organisation – hospitals having an “accident and emergency” style culture, children’s charities having child-like elements in the meetings, etc.
So it came as no surprise to discover, through this lightweight, absurdist piece by Jessica Mullen, that an outsider finds the V&A impenetrable as an organisation.
Even the Q&A was somewhat bewildering, as the interviewer asked a couple of obscure questions and then threw the Q&A open to the floor, to find only one question…from me. Jessica Mullen batted back an answer in such an inscrutable manner, I imagine that she’ll be head-hunted for MI6…if she isn’t in there already.
“Stand clear of the doors”, Japanese poster art style……inspired by…
In any case, we’d not really explored the Japanese rooms before and thought we’d find the whole thing fascinating just six months after visiting Japan.
After that, we both felt exhausted, so we headed home to Noddyland. It was still so early that Janie was able to photograph some ducks on the Noddyland village pond – bless.
Not like me to be a fashionista, but Janie loves the V&A and had worked out that, on the back of her membership, we could take in the new Mary Quant and Christian Dior exhibitions in preview without breaking a sweat on this late opening Friday.
I preceded the impending double dose of fashion with a double dose of tennis. The first hour was a singles bout against a gentleman who was a fairly regular opponent of mine in the early days but who I hadn’t played for some while. The handicap system had us level for this game, but I think he was having a bit of an off day and in any case all the luck seemed to go my way and not his, resulting in me registering a good win.
The second hour was the senior doubles, which I have mentioned several times before, e.g. click here. Robin Simpson, who is one of the handful of nonagenarians who still plays, was on the other side and on top form today. He seemed able to get back everything my partner and I could throw at him. In truth it was a delight to witness his performance, except that, at 5-all, 30-all, you don’t want your supposed winning shots sent back to you with interest, on two consecutive points, by a 92-year-old, to seal the set for your opponents.
Photo from a previous doubles of a somewhat less senior variety
Then a quick snack before Janie joined me and we headed off to the V&A. We figured that the late afternoon slot might be best for minimising the queuing, as we had been warned that we might need to queue for quite a long time for both the Quant and the Dior.
The members desk recommended that we start with Quant, where we only had to queue for about 10 minutes. Dig this groovy trailer for the show:
This exhibition will be running until February 2020, so if you read this Ogblog piece in time, clicking here or on the image below will tell you how to see the show – in any case the V&A resources about this show should still be there.
Click this image to see the V&A website resources on this Mary Quant exhibition, including the credit for this image.
Janie especially loves these 60’s fashions. I found the story of Mary Quant’s early life interesting…
…indeed, in truth, I was more interested in the whole iconography and 60’s culture generally than in the fashion. But this show has plenty of fun imagery and artefacts as well as fashion garments.
More coat couture than haute couture. Photos (apart from the link ones, which are credited on the V&A site) by Daisy (Janie) – this one shows Mary Quant’s Daisy doll – after our time apparently.
Then Janie and I went to the Members Lounge for some refreshments before braving the Dior queue, which we had been warned was a formidable 30 minutes or more job.
The Christian Dior exhibition has been running since February and has proved so incredibly popular that the run has been extended to September 2019, but even that has now sold out so it is available to members only in the absence of pre-booked tickets.
Click here or the image below for on-line information about the Dior exhibition. There are several vids and lots of amazing photos and panoramas of the show, which might satisfy many a curious reader who cannot get to see the show itself.
Click this image for the V&A resources on the Christian Dior exhibition, including the credit for this image.
In the event, our choice of that late afternoon/early evening slot proved wise, as we only needed to queue for about 5 minutes to get in to the Dior. We chatted with an unusual lady dressed in a bizarre assortment of home-made turquoise-dyed garments.
The haute couture in truth means even less to me than the Mary Quant type fashion, but the context of Dior’s life, untimely death and then how the House of Dior progressed over the decades was interesting.
Further, the Dior exhibition in particular is beautifully laid out – stunning in places, so Janie, who took loads of photos in the Quant one, took loads more in the Dior one.
Spot GedSpot DaisyDreamy final room……so dreamy I almost nodded off in there.
Janie’s stack of pictures from this afternoon and early evening at the V&A can all be seen on Flickr by clicking here or below.
I found the contrast between the two exhibitions fascinating, making it a well worthwhile visit, for me, to see the two shows. In truth, it was a very enjoyable and interesting outing from both of our points of view. The benefits of Janie being a member of the V&A really came into play for this visit. We’re planning another next month, so watch this space!
I don’t really have the words to describe how excited Janie was about this exhibition, ever since the V&A pre-announced it about a year ago. Then, when we learnt that we could see a preview of the exhibition and take in a talk by the curators of the exhibition that day, we booked out the Friday afternoon and Janie got even more excited about it.
So perhaps in some ways the afternoon was destined to be an anti-climax for us.
We chose to book our timed tickets to view the exhibition after the talk. We got to the V&A early enough to have a lite bite there before the talk.
The new members’ cafe was heaving with people and a queue, so we went instead to the new public cafe at the new Exhibition Road entrance, which did not have a queue and did have outdoor seating available – a bonus on a glorious sunny June afternoon.
Then to the talk. Here is a link to the V&A resource for the talk. It was a bit folksy and disorganised, as V&A talks tend to be, but in this instance it seemed especially so. The curators, Claire Wilcox and Circe Henestrosa seemed unfamiliar with the microphones, making it hard to hear them at times. Circe in particular moved around a lot, which is fine, but surely the V&A has clip-on mics for roving speakers – I’m sure I’ve seen those used there before.
Frida Kahlo is such an interesting character; the intersection between her life, her personal tragedies and her art work is a fascinating topic. It was intriguing to learn, for example that her photographer father, Guillermo Kahlo, took so many self portraits – he might be seen as the founding father of the modern selfie craze.
In the context of Frida’s work, though, given that so many of her pictures were self-portraits, it seemed an insightful point about her father and his work.
Yet much of the complexity and confusion between the truth about Frida Kahlo and the cultural icon she has become (to some extent through her own design, to some extent through cultural appropriation) was glossed over in the talk.
The central conceit of the exhibition is that it is displaying a large selection of Frida Kahlo’s personal artefacts, which were kept locked away at La Casa Azul for fifty years after her death. The reason for this lengthy secretion was not well explained by the curators. Diego Rivera’s will stipulated that they should remain unseen for 15 years after his death, but they were not uncovered for a further 30.
We tried but didn’t get a chance to ask that question during question time, whereas a Mexican woman with verbal diarrhoea was allowed to waffle on for five or ten minutes raising about half-a-dozen obscure points without pausing for breath or answers from the curators.
In truth, the Wikipedia entries for Frida Kahlo and for La Casa Azul explain matters better than the talk. I guess the truth of the matter is quite mundane. The cult of Frida Kahlo didn’t really get going until after the 2002 movie “Frida” – which Janie and I loved at the time btw. So although La Casa Azul became a museum immediately after Diego Rivera’s death, it was a very low key (and probably low budget) one until this century.
Frida’s tribute in profile
Never mind – then on to the exhibition itself.
At the entrance they hadn’t yet differentiated between those who had acquired timed entry tickets and members who had just turned up, so everyone had to join the same lengthy queue. Unaware of this, we walked past the queue and walked up to the ticket dude who we imagined to be our timed ticket dude.
“We have timed tickets”, I said.
“Certainly”, he said, scanning the tickets. We then realised that he was actually the entrance for the Ocean Liners exhibition, so how our tickets scanned for that goodness only knows.
He tried to get us in to the Frida Kahlo, but we were sent to the back of the queue, there to wonder whether our tickets would now scan for Frida Kahlo having been scanned for Ocean Liners.
Somehow we got in. Perhaps those scanners merely go “bleep” without really doing anything.
It was pretty crowded in the exhibition and we found some of the preview members rather too pushy and elbowy for our taste. I’m not sure that members’ preview days at the V&A are such a good idea for us in future, unless we can find a less crazy-busy slot. In any case, the V&A should do something about the lighting of the Frida Kahlo show – some of the exhibits were hard to see and the explanatory rubric hard to read. Hopefully they put that right on the back of feedback from members like us.
Still, many of the exhibits are truly stunning and fascinating. Don’t let my rant about how disorganised the V&A can be put you off seeing the exhibition; it really is worth it. You get to see a lot of Frida Kahlo’s paintings as well as the artefacts and some superb films and photographs taken during her lifetime, providing a great deal of visual context to Frida Kahlo’s life and work.
But don’t ask about the leaflet that explains the artefacts and exhibits in each room, which we strove so hard to obtain but failed in the end to secure. Different members of staff told us that:
the leaflets had all run out (on preview day?),
they had simply run out of leaflets at the desk and they’d have some more for us shortly,
a leaflet would be brought to us once we were inside the exhibition (some hope, despite chasing),
the leaflets weren’t ready yet but would be available in a few days’ time,
there wasn’t to be a leaflet for this exhibition at all…
…I think staff are “trained” (to the extent that the word “training” applies in that place) to make up whatever comes into their heads at the time and say it kindly but with an authoritative tone to mollify the unsuspecting punter.
No doubt Rebecca, who promised to get back to us by e-mail with a definitive answer (and hopefully a copy of the leaflet) will come up trumps for us, if trumps there are to be had. While we were engaging Rebecca in this task, one of the elbowy blue-rinse members elbowed me away from the corner of the members information desk (upon which I was merely leaning to support my aching back) without a please or a thank you. I don’t approve of manspreading, but femshoving of that kind is even more overtly aggressive.
It’s a shame, really, but by the end we couldn’t wait to get out of the V&A that day. Yes, the Frida Kahlo is a fascinating exhibition, but the place seemed so disorganised and we just felt the V&A could have done better with this one.
Janie consults Frida on how to curate herself…that IS Frida’s type of question
Little boy, captivated by the images and artefacts
We booked a late afternoon preview slot for this exhibition months ago, when it was first announced.
We love Winnie-The-Pooh; we don’t love swarms of children. Simples.
Result.
We got to see this charming little exhibition in ideal (for us) circumstances. Enough people around for it to have atmosphere but a quiet slot mid-to-late afternoon, just ahead of any members who might bring their children after school.
Reviews and stuff (at the time of writing just previews) can be found through this search term – click here.
We took several photos – if you want to see more than just the few on show in this piece, either click here or the photo below:
The show is an interactive experience, but in a very analogue way – with a staircase to sit halfway up, a slide, an hexagonal spinning name generator and some drawing exercises.
This little girl tried out the drawing exercises
No virtual reality like the Modigliani across the water, nor even any computerised games. Pooh sticks was thus, in my opinion, under-served. One senior lady member wondered out loud whether any children had been involved in the curating of this exhibition. I thought it a good question and guessed that the answer is no.
Still, the exhibition was beautifully designed – Janie thought it one of the most stylish she can ever remember – with lots of hoardings in the style of E. H. Shepard drawings emblazoned with well chosen chunks of A.A. Milne’s wonderfully crafted words and some sound effects, such as bees in the vicinity of the story about Pooh searching for honey. The simplicity, I guess, is a large part of the show’s charm.
I even visited the North Pole
I got to visit the North Pole. Janie, of course, now five weeks into her pole dancing hobby, found Pooh’s pole a little tame for her taste…
Janie visits a pole in her own way
…yet Janie was surprisingly timid at the idea of trying out the slide, which she did attempt, eventually, rather gingerly in my view:
Hard landing, apparently
We had lots of fun at this exhibition and did learn quite a lot about the wider context of the works from the exhibits.
Afterwards, we tried out the new members’ room for refreshments and very much enjoyed it. A much larger, airier space than the previous room, which was rather pokey and “uti” for the V&A. The friendly staff and tempting menu come into their own in this improved facility.
Keeping the wolf (or perhaps, in this case, tigger) from the door
As for the Pooh show, the V&A shop will no doubt do lots of business with some excellent books about the wider context and also some beautiful editions of the Milne/Shepard Pooh books themselves. But we resolved instead to stop off at the flat and pick up my tatty Methuen paperback Poohs for the weekend – by gosh they are dog-eared and falling apart but they are mine:
My Poohs and I’m proud of them
After dinner, little Daisy dropped off to sleep while I was reading her some of the poems. Bless.
Diana Darke is an English writer and broadcaster who bought and restored a villa house in the Old City of Damascus some years ago. She talked about the multi-faith, multi-cultural nature of Damascus; we learned that Sunnis and Shias often intermarry in Damascus; those folk are known as Sushis. The old city in Damascus has not been badly damaged in the war, but a corrupt lawyer tried (unsuccessfully) to steal Diana’s house from her. She’s written a book about it – click here – Janie bought the book after the talk.
Janie and I took tea at the Umayyad Palace Restaurant, Damascus, 1997
Zahed Tajeddin is an artist from Aleppo. He bought and restored an old villa house in the old city of Aleppo several years ago. He explained that most of the old city of Aleppo was very dilapidated when he was growing up; his grandparents were the last generation to use those houses as comfortable residences. But a restoration trend had started towards the end of the last century with a few restored and used as restaurants – Janie and I knew about that…
Janie and I dined at the Sissi House Restaurant, Aleppo, in 1997
Janie and I dined at the Sissi House Restaurant, Aleppo, in 1997
…but Zahed chose to buy and restore one to its former glory and residential purpose. His description of the project and his pictures were, for me, probably the best bit of the talk. Of course Zahed’s house has been severely damaged in the war; many of the neighbouring houses have been completely destroyed.
Aleppo street in 1997
An Aleppo Street in 2017
Both stories were fascinating. Zahed’s story is sadder, but both of the speakers demonstrated incredible courage and resilient determination to overcome their respective difficulties. Incredibly, Zahed has already started restoring his house again.
There wasn’t much time for questions, which was possibly just as well, because the few questions that did come up were a bit daft.
There was however plenty of time for a glass of wine and chat after the talk. Janie got to buy the book and chat briefly with both of the speakers, asking them far more sensible questions than those that came earlier from the lecture hall grand-standers. We met a couple of interesting young people; one young Oxford student who wants to go to Syria as part of her studies and one young Syrian student at SOAS.
A fascinating evening, rounded off with some fine sushi from the Sushi Shop in South Kensington…we’re talking Japanese style fish here, not a Damascene mix of Sunni and Shia people.
Exhibition Road – Aston Webb Screen and new steps from within
Monday 26 June 2017
Janie was very excited when we got tickets for Amanda Levete’s talk at the V&A, just ahead of “the big reveal” of the results of the new Exhibition Road Building Project. The talk was nicely timed for Janie’s birthday, 26 June.
We had hoped to get to see the Serpentine stuff that day as well, but we didn’t get our act together in time for that; indeed we only just allowed enough time to walk through the park from the flat to the V&A for the talk.
The talk was very interesting. Amanda Levete explained the background to and details of this extraordinarily ambitious and unusual project, to build a substantial exhibition space and piazza in what had been dead space at the Exhibition Road end of the V&A site.
Of course, the new exhibition space is underground, so cynics might argue that this V&A project was a gargantuan Kensington basement development. But we aren’t cynics in this regard – we were chomping at the bit to see the new space.
Drinks were pleasant enough and we chatted to Amanda Levete herself briefly. She cemented our view that we wanted to return Friday to see the new space properly ahead of the big reveal and events that evening.
Friday 30 June 2017
Daisy got her act together on the Friday, so we did have time to visit the Serpentine Gallery and Pavilion ahead of the V&A.
Francis Kéré’s Pavilion
We started with the pavilion, not least because we were both peckish and could picnic therein…
…except we couldn’t, as an unattended bag encouraged the staff to clear the pavilion just as we started to munch.
I suppose there was some irony in me seeing the work of one of Chelmsford’s greatest so soon after my visit to Chelmsford. But I must say I prefer the idea of Grayson Perry’s work far more than I like the work itself. Janie is keener on the work.
Then on to the V&A to see the new space “ahead of the plebs”, as Daisy put it, with no apparent irony, despite her regular vitriol about social inequality, in the borough and beyond.
Just before the arrival of Joe Public, a man puts the finishing touches on the Oculus with sticky-back plastic.
Old and new features combine.
Inside the new exhibition space
We then waited for “the big reveal” in the new Exhibition Road cafe. I thought there might be a fanfare at 17:00, or at least the multiple gates on the Aston Webb screen would be flung open, but no such thing happened. They merely started to admit people through the main Aston Webb gate whereas previously they were asking to see membership cards.
As we had some time to kill until the opening Friday evening events of the Reveal Festival were to begin, we went to see the Pink Floyd exhibition. Pink Floyd have never really been my thing, but of course I am familiar with much of the music and the iconography, so it was interesting to see it. Pretty crowded on a Friday evening, it was, especially as I suspect we weren’t the only people who had planned to take in that exhibition ahead of the live music events.
After the Pink Floyd, we wandered down to the John Madejski Garden to watch KOKOROKO setting up and sound checking for the headline gig later.
So we soon headed off upstairs to find the Hejira gig. This was in Room 82, a relatively small room, so we did the right thing getting to the room in good time, finding one of the last bits of wall space for a proper view.
The music is, in theory, inspired by Ethiopian music, but we couldn’t really detect much of that. Still, the lead singer is very elegant and has an extraordinary voice.
The following embedded vid is far funkier than the music they played in Room 82:
After that, we went to see the Music Television exhibit in the Tapestries room, then failed to get in to the virtual reality behind the scenes tour. I suppose, as we have had a special, private behind the scenes tour of the V&A in our time, our need for the virtual tour was not so great.
Then back to the John Madejski Garden to see get a drink and see KOKOROKO. The garden was really starting to fill up festival style, so we got ourselves a good position and enjoyed dancing to the DJ’s music while waiting for the gig.
KOKOROKO were very good – an afrobeat sound that reminded me a bit of Fela Kuti but with a more fusion/eclectic mix of sounds. I have embedded a vid at the bottom of this piece.
Everyone was movin’ to the groovin’
There was a great spirit among the crowd; we ended up dancing and high-fiving with various strangers. Whereas Janie and I had possibly been the youngest people at Amanda Levete’s talk on Monday, we were among the oldest people enjoying the festival headline act – who cares? We had a great time.
Janie and I arranged a day off on the Friday (4th) primarily to visit the Luxury Travel Fair. Conde Nast Traveller Magazine had bunged Janie a couple of freebie tickets and we are seeking ideas for our next trip.
We had also wanted to keep some extra time free for the weekend as the V&A had mysteriously pre-announced that there would be a weekend of activities around the Revolution Exhibition – which we saw in preview a couple of months ago – click here. Janie had chased this up a couple of times but we only got the programme about a week before – still several items looked good.
I didn’t hold much hope for the travel fair, so wasn’t too disappointed when Janie announced that she needed to get Bill to sort out a problem with the boiler at the house and that first thing Friday was the ideal time. Naturally, that took up the whole morning, so in the end we got to the travel fair around 14:45.
There were a few interesting stands, but on the whole the larger agents had sent their “B” teams to staff the stands and very few of the smaller agents covered holidays that might appeal to us. Cruise anyone? Not us.
So we had bags of time to get to the V&A for the first thing we wanted to see: a movie entitled Louder Than Love by Tony D’Annunzio which was due to be shown at 18:15. We got there about half an hour early, to discover that the movies were running early so that piece was playing to an empty room as we arrived and we caught the last 20-25 minutes of it. Probably got enough out of it that way nonetheless. Roger Daltry and Alice Cooper being the most interesting people from that scene still alive and their interviews were in that last reel.
That timing shift enabled us to see John Lennon “In His Own Write” that same evening. This is basically a performance piece based on John Lennon’s 1964 poetry book of that name. Cartoons too, projected onto a screen. The performers; Jonathan Glew, Peter Caulfield and Cassie Vallance, were all very good. Some of the poems were good; some very silly, some horribly violent. Still, certainly an hour well spent before dinner.
We also saw a small exhibit about Glastonbury and danced for a while in a rub-a-dub stylee to Babylon Uprising. Not quite “Janie and Ian, the only one’s dancing”…but not far off.
Sunday 6 November
After a cold game of tennis at Boston Manor, we went straight to the V&A to see a conversation between Joe Boyd and Nigel Waymouth. We were keen to see this, not least because Joe is a client of Janie’s and I found his book White Bicycles fascinating.
I thought I should try to sport some fitting gear, given our incongruous “just off the tennis court” look, so I wore the tee-shirt Kim had made for me from Janie’s “guru on a camper-van” picture which she used as the 60’s party invite in the spring:
I also thought I should sport one of my most psychedelic-looking bandannas. It was indeed all in keeping with the subject matter of the conversation, just as I thought, although perhaps not so much in keeping with the way the rather elderly (on the whole) audience was dressed.
We ran into Brian Eno briefly before the session started. I don’t think he stayed for the session, so must have been popping in to see Joe before the start.
At the end of the session Janie asked Joe Boyd a rather penetrating question about commercialism (or rather lack thereof), which I thought was by far the most interesting question (and indeed answer) in the Q&A bit of the event. Whether or not Joe will have anything more to do with Janie after that question is hard to say. I’ll guess yes.
Still, you could be forgiven for thinking that the V&A curator might have been hanging out at our groovy happening taking notes ahead of the exhibition.
They used a similar mind-blowing sound-bleed technique as the one we used at the party in the themed rooms.
The penultimate room in the exhibition is a sixties festivals room, with festival memorabilia, Woodstock (the movie) on a loop and AstroTurf on the ground so you can chill in a sixties-rock-fest-stylee.
It is a great show. If you read this posting in time (I think it runs to February 2017) get thee a ticket to the V&A show and surry down to South Kensington to see the show. You won’t be disappointed.
In truth, neither of us much liked it. I really didn’t like it at all. Some of the rooms were so noisy and had so many different stimulae at the same time, I couldn’t really get my head around the art of it all. Perhaps it really was replicating the heaving nature of fashion shows. It didn’t help that, for this show, that Friday evening slot seemed very popular and therefore very crowded. Not for me.
We knew that we’d find several examples of our fashion photographer friend Anthea Simms’s work and sought those out; several to be found amongst the iconic postcards and posters for sale in the exhibition shop. We liked that bit best.
I for one was grateful that we’d arranged to go on to the Wigmore Hall for some grub and a late night concert afterwards; it felt like an escape from chaos into tranquility – what a huge cultural shift just down the road.
