Category Archives: Exhibition

The Future is in development

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The Future Starts Here
Victoria and Albert Museum
Exhibition Road, London SW7
12 May to 4 November 2018
Symposium, “A Toolkit for the Future”, 29 June 2018

I’m a little tired of the future, perhaps because my doctoral research requires me to think about “the future of design museums”, but also I’m old enough to recall another time when the future was centre stage; back when we worried that the Millennium might put a bug in it I edited a book with “future” in the title.* Contextualising our current future obsession (see Nesta’s Future Fest) I teach a semester of Cultural and Critical Studies lectures and seminars to Visual Communication students at University of Brighton, “Visions and Versions of the Future”, where we look at significant moments and sites of post-war design culture, from the white-heat of technological progress to the anti-design roots of Postmodernism, alongside the imagined futures of science fiction, the smoke and mirrors of future-gazers and the commercial hocus-pocus of trend forecasting. The crux of the argument is, we may imagine multifarious futures but they are often prophetic, based on hints, hunches and the cutting-edge of disciplines, so it’s often just a matter of time before we catch up with our imaginations. That (hopefully) runs counter to the prevailing tendency of seeing the future as strange and difficult, whether utopian or dystopian, always out of reach and therefore beyond our capacity to influence or change; that version of the future which got us to the dangerous situation we are in now…
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From the Archive; design Boom

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James Jennifer Georgina, 2010, by Jennifer Butler, designed by Irma Boom

James Jennifer Georgina, 2010, by Jennifer Butler, designed by Irma Boom

Last week I wrote and delivered a lecture about Feminism to first-year Graphic Design and Illustration students at the University of Brighton. In addition to the feminist art history strategy of re-evaluating under-appreciated women artists, I’d like to stress the importance of presenting female role models to students, more so now that the gender balance in the classroom is tipping in favour of female students while the teaching is mainly done by men. Of course this is an old story; I wrote about the invisibility of women in design in 1995, first published in Eye and re-posted here. Kudos goes to the women’s advocacy groups within design academia and the profession, including WD+RU and Graphics UK Women, who are curating, teaching and writing about women in design. So, with the aim of increasing visibility, as the last few posts have been interviews with the usual suspects, here is an interview with one of the world’s most renowned designers, Irma Boom, who has consistently advocated experimentation with materials and techniques (which is good advice for all), while self-directing her career and occasionally stepping into the limelight to promote her work.
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From the Archive; Malcolm Garrett interview

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Screen Shot from Malcolm Garrett's website, showing Buzzcocks graphics, photographed by Nick Harling

Screen Shot from Malcolm Garrett’s website, showing Buzzcocks graphics, photographed by Nick Harling

I love collections, and exhibitions of collections, especially when they inspire designers and their work, so I would very much like to make the journey to Manchester (which I wrote about, here) to see Collecting Malcolm Garrett, part of the design festival, Design Manchester 17. In celebration of Malcolm Garrett and his work in the music industry (which he spoke about at Pick Me Up, reviewed here), I’m posting another previously unpublished interview from the British Council exhibition, Sound Design. Malcolm mentions his old school friends, Peter Saville (read that interview here) and Keith Breeden, who I also interviewed, so watch out for that interview too.

Malcolm Garrett, interviewed by Liz Farrelly on 12/7/2000.

Liz Farrelly: Where did it all start?

Malcolm Garrett: The Buzzocks was 23 years ago. It came about because I wanted to do a sleeve that wasn’t just a piece of cardboard and I was always interested in corporate graphics, as opposed to corporations, and subverting corporate graphics and systems graphics too, because a record sleeve is fundamentally information. So I was looking at it from an informational standpoint, as opposed to an art gallery standpoint. We were selling something so much more ethereal than say, banking services, so there was a frisson there. And because, with the Buzzcocks, some of their songs were looking at the nature of society and relationships in quite a detached way, it seemed appropriate to misappropriate some form of informational graphics.
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From the Archive; Peter Saville interview

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The London Design Festival is the capital’s most prestigious design event, taking over the city for much of September each year. Back in 2013, Peter Saville won the London Design Festival Medal; I interviewed him for Blueprint and the article is available online via DesignCurial. At the time I asked a number of creatives about their favourite Saville works, and one guest blogger, Paul West of Form, mentioned True Faith by New Order, with photography by Trevor Key. Now, a display of work by that legendary photographer, a regular collaborator with Saville, is on show as part of Hull 2017, UK City of Culture. Trevor Key’s Top 40, features his iconic photographic images for some of the twentieth century’s most famous record sleeves. I’m using this opportunity to post another unpublished interview with a contributor to Sound Design, this time Peter Saville, as a number of their joint efforts featured in this exhibition, which the British Council toured across Asia and Australia in the early years of the new Millennium. These edited interviews come from long phone conversations or studio visits. I tried to keep the interviewees focused on the topic of designing for the music industry, and rather than bombard them with penetrating questions, I preferred to let the designers do the talking and reminisce anecdotal stories about the finer details of working with musicians and labels. You can find the Aubrey Powell interview, here, and there will be more in this series. As I’ve said before, I’m reluctant to post copyrighted images to illustration the interviews, but this Japanese website offering a complete discography of Peter Saville’s record sleeve designs is all you’ll need.

Peter Saville, interviewed by Liz Farrelly on 1/8/2000.

Liz Farrelly: Tell me about your involvement with Factory Records.

Peter Saville: Going right back to the beginning, I was at school with Malcolm Garrett, and at that point our horizons stretched no further than a Hawkwind, Velvet Underground or Roxy Music cover. Then Malcolm went to Reading University, and courtesy of the library there, the history of twentieth-century design became known to us, via his reading list, which included design theory that we at Manchester Art College didn’t get. I started college in 1974 and graduated in 1978. Malcolm did a year at Reading University while I did a Foundation Course and I encouraged Malcolm to do his next three years at Manchester.
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Lecture; Temporary Contemporary, the Boilerhouse at the V&A

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As a tie-in with Bloomsbury Academic, publishers of Design Objects and the Museum (see, here), Joanna Weddell and myself were invited to give a Lunchtime Lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum. As we shared the time-slot our talks were short and aimed at a general audience, but both are based on doctoral research, and the blurb draws connections between our projects, so I’ve included it in full before posting an edited version of my talk with the slides, which provided an additional strand of information supplementing the visuals.

Contemporary Design Objects in the Museum: Two Perspectives
The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7
26 April 2017

‘This lecture will examine the exhibition of 20th century design. Circulation, or ‘Circ’ was responsible for many of the Museum’s acquisitions of post-war contemporary design. Joanna Weddell will discuss Circ’s role as a ‘museum within a museum’ through shows such as Design Review, 1975. The Boilerhouse Gallery was a temporary intervention at the Museum funded and run by the Conran Foundation, as Liz Farrelly will explain. Betweeen 1981 and 1986 the Gallery increased the visibility of contemporary design through thematic exhibitions that booted visitor figures and grabbed headlines, later morphing into the Design Museum at Shad Thames.’ Lunchtime Lectures Summer 2017, V&A.

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First Visit; Tallinn, Estonian

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This gallery contains 22 photos.

This gallery illustrates my whistle-stop trip to Tallinn, Estonia. I was invited to deliver a paper at a seminar, part of the 7th Tallinn Applied Art Triennial, for an edited version of that paper, see here. This post is about … Continue reading →

Seminar Paper; Mediating Design, a case study in diversity

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Modes of Mediating Applied Art and Design
7th Tallinn Applied Art Triennial
Soprus Cinema
Vanna-Posti 8, Tallinn, Estonia
21 April 2017

This is an edited version of a paper I presented amidst Art Deco splendor in Tallinn. While the city was still waiting for spring the reception was warm, and the audience and fellow speakers contributed to a lively discussion around the role of media in the mediating art and design. I’d like to thank Triin Jerlie and Keiu Krikmann for inviting me to speak, and the organising committee of the Tallinn Applied Art Triennial and the British Embassy Tallinn for funding my trip. Look for another post about Tallinn, the city-wide Triennial and the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design.

This paper is still in the form of a ‘talk’, but also constitutes work-in-progress that will inform the last chapter of my doctoral thesis on the future of design museums. In May, I presented a longer version to University of Brighton MA Art and Design History students as part of the module, Critical Reflection, at the invitation of my colleague, Megha Rajguru, and that version of the talk provided an opportunity to explore changing definitions of ‘interpretation’. The images are from my PowerPoint presentation, and either taken from the Internet or using my Apple iPhone 4S.
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From the Archive; You never know when you might need them

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Spread from ‘Blueprint’ showing University of Brighton Gallery and exhibition design featuring salvaged fire doors

Spread from ‘Blueprint’ showing the University Gallery in Brighton and the exhibition design featuring salvaged fire doors

I was reminded of this article when visiting another exhibition, George Hardie …Fifty Odd Years, also at the University Gallery at University of Brighton. (Look out for a review of that exhibition, soon).

Back in 2005, Professor Hardie contributed his collection of rulers to You never know when you might need them, and they feature in the opening spread of the Blueprint article about the show, see above. At the time, my husband, Gregg Virostek, was an Interior Architecture student and worked on the exhibition build, while I was beginning to explore an obsession with collecting. That interest has developed into a research topic, as evidenced by this blog. So, as this article has yet to be digitised and made available online by the originally publisher it, here it is for reference.
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First Visit; Vitra Schaudepot

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Exterior of the Vitra Schaudepot, by Herzog & de Meuron. Photo © Vitra Design Museum, Julien Lanoo

Exterior of the Vitra Schaudepot, by Herzog & de Meuron. Photo © Vitra Design Museum, Julien Lanoo

Vitra Schaudepot
Vitra Design Museum
Charles-Eames-Str. 2, Weil am Rhein, Germany
Visited, 31 May 2016

I used to go on press trips so regularly that I thought I didn’t need holidays. Travelling on planes and trains across Europe, America and further afield I visited designers, studios, factories and museums. Having swopped my peripatetic lifestyle for a more sedentary teaching gig, this press trip came out of the blue. I previously visited Vitra for a MUSCON conference (read about it, here) and marvelled at the Vitra Haus (read, here), so was aware of the upcoming addition to the extraordinary campus and keen to see the Schaudepot (Open Storage), a relatively new development in museum practice. A return visit wasn’t on my agenda though, so when this invitation popped into my inbox along with a commission to review the Vitra Collection’s new home, I was up for it! My article appeared in Blueprint magazine (no.347, p.36) and is available online at Design/Curial, here. This post adds details from the press conference and a conversation with Curator Janna Lipsky.
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The Happy Film; graphic design on screen

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Stefan Sagmeister in ‘The Happy Film’, seeking discomfort on the streets of New York. Photograph: Ben Wolf.

Stefan Sagmeister in ‘The Happy Film’, seeking discomfort on the streets of New York. Photograph: Ben Wolf.

The Happy Film
Duke of York’s Picturehouse
Preston Road, Brighton, East Sussex
14 June 2017 at 6pm

I’m not a fan of solo cinema visits but even with my partner-in-crime currently ‘away’, I had to see this just released, much discussed film at this special screening. Right on the money, the power-couple hosts of Glug Brighton, Carl Rush of creative agency Crush, and Helen, the renowned Illustration agent and founder of Agency Rush, invited graphic-design hero (and I don’t use the term lightly) Stefan Sagmeister to show his seven-years in the making documentary, The Happy Film. Despite the lure of a glorious summer evening, Brighton’s historic Duke of York’s cinema was packed with the city’s creative community including a good number of Graphic Design and Illustration students from University of Brighton, come to see the legend in action, for after a film of thrills and spills Sagmeister stepped up for the Q&A.
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