Category Archives: Exhibition

Club to Catwalk, legacy or nostalgia?

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Club to Catwalk poster

Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
10 July 2013 to 16 February 2014
Visited 18 August and 20 September 2013

This long running exhibition was hotly anticipated, but it was not without its flaws, which became more obvious, as I made two extended visits to the show, and thanks to my V&A Membership Card, countless quick pop-ins. Each visit brought more to my attention, and also made me wish for more…like a kid in a candy shop. I lived through this time and as a young Londoner was a regular at a wide range of night clubs from the rockabilly Gaz’s Rocking Blues to the proto-rave of Delirium (I even worked at The Wag). I also shopped like it was going out of style (of course, it wasn’t) and owned garments by many of the featured designers, picked up in their tiny Covent Garden shops, at Kensington Market on a Saturday and Camden on a Sunday, at Jones and Browns, and up and down the Kings Road. Most of those treasures are long gone as I gave piles of clothes away before going on a long trip in the late 1990s, and sold some of the choicer pieces. There are just a few frocks still carefully preserved… One of my students asked me what from my early 20s (her age) am I nostalgic about, and mostly it is these garments, as I try to recall particular outfits and what I might have looked like. Back then we didn’t walk around with camera phones and there are so few photos of those nights out.

About the show…
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Bethan Laura Wood in lights; interview

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Bethan Laura Wood and Liz Farrelly
Conversation, 15 August 2013

Bethan's contribution to Selfridge's Festival of Imagination. PHOTO MATT WRITTLE © copyright Matt Writtle 2013.

Bethan’s contribution to Selfridge’s Festival of Imagination.
PHOTO MATT WRITTLE
© copyright Matt Writtle 2013.

During the London Design Festival, Bethan Laura Wood staged her first solo show in the UK, at The Aram Gallery, London, entitled, Zigzag:Crisscross. I interviewed her beforehand, but it was more of a conversation, over dinner at L’Entrepôt, and below is the edited interview that appeared in the small but perfectly formed publication, which accompanied the show. This month Bethan and her studio colleague, Kim Thome, unveiled a window installation as part of Selfridge’s Festival of Imagination. A big hit with Selfridges and the ICA, Bethan also contributed to the ICA Off-Site exhibition staged in the shell of Selfridges hotel building, also in September 2013, and I’ll be adding some thoughts about that show later.

Exhibition booklet

Liz Farrelly: “Zigzag:Crisscross” at the Aram Gallery features two new projects. Why bring them together?
Bethan Laura Wood: As a young designer, the idea of having a retrospective seemed wrong; so this is a show of work made this year, and the two projects are inspired by urban environments where I live and work. Zigzag comes under the umbrella of the London collection (which also includes Particle), and Crisscross was inspired by Mexico City. Plus, it’s an ongoing investigation – and love – of the materials that make up the city, and especially the layering in a city like London, built up over years.
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à la mode in New York

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Claude Monet. Women in the Garden, 1866. Courtesy of Musée, d’Orsay, Paris. Alongside embellished white dress from the exhibition

Claude Monet. Women in the Garden, 1866. Courtesy of Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Alongside embellished white dress from the exhibition

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
26 February to 27 May 2013
Visited 12 May 2013

From PUNK to the sublime; the next-door exhibition, on that Sunday morning, was one I’d just missed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris back in January, where tantalizingly the entrance banner was still up but the show had closed. So I was excited to see this joint venture (between museums in Paris, New York and Chicago) in its second incarnation, enjoying spacious galleries and perfect lighting that happily accommodated both paintings and textiles.

Even though my main professional interest is contemporary design in the context of design museums, as an avid gallery-goer I’m drawn to an exhibition such as this, which presents a sure-fire art-historical hit (there’s no better crowd pleaser than Impressionism) in a new light. And, from the point of view of Museum Studies this is an interesting show; mixing over 80 major figure paintings by Impressionists and their fashionable contemporaries, with historical artefacts and garments – the clothes and accessories depicted in paint on canvas – demonstrates a newly collaborative approach to exhibition curation.
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PUNK, but not as I knew it

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The DIY Gallery at PUNK: Chaos to Couture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featuring its “designationed punk”, Sid Vicious

The DIY Gallery at PUNK: Chaos to Couture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featuring its “designationed punk hero”, Sid Vicious

PUNK: Chaos to Couture
The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
9 May to 14 August 2013
Visited 12 May 2013

What’s to be said about a “blockbuster exhibition”? Having reached saturation point due to blanket press coverage, you’ll dutifully add it to your list of “things to do this summer”, remembering to avoid weekends, bank holidays and school half-term…

If it’s the Metropolitan Museum’s annual summer exhibition, you’ve probably also ogled the fabulous frocks and wardrobe malfunctions that clad celebrities (from Aye to Zee) at the Met Ball (proper title, the Costume Institute Gala). We have Diana Vreeland as “special consultant” to thank for kicking off the exhibit-themed frivolities back in 1971 (the film, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel investigates Vreeland’s role at the museum). Now the Met Ball is run by Vogue and raises millions of dollars annually for the museum.
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