Museum/ Gallery visits

The V & A


During the visit to V & A, I and my group looked around for artists and artwork that related to our theme of memory. Other than artists, we also found objects such as TV’s, phones or radios from the past century. These objects have a huge influence on the project as we can look back at how they looked like before and how they advanced in technology to this current era. This links to memories which are our project. By looking back at how something has been created, we go back in time to explore the memories in the past.
The first section we visited was the ‘Japan culture’ section. It showed us some of the old traditions fashion and objects. I was mainly interested in the old item holders that would carry things such as old cigarettes or sake. The reason this was within my interest was that they carried a memory or part of a memory that someone would leave inside these boxes. Quite similar to our Box files where we collected things over the summer holiday. The date stated 1790’s however; the items inside of the boxes didn’t look to be old at all. They were very well preserved up to our current date.


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This section of the gallery also filled me up about some of the fashion of old Japan. The clothing for woman was just as the type of clothes a Queen would wear, but the colour stated otherwise. It reminded me of a ‘Gothic’ clothing style that we see in our current era, but these clothes were from the past and have a special name called ‘Lolita’. These clothes are still very popular in Japan and it feels like a memory that cannot be forgotten. By this, I mean that it never got old. The Victorian era clothing in England is no longer casual wear in our century and we rarely go back to it. Only the royalties still wear these clothes; however in Japan the clothes that were worn hundreds of years ago are still popular in the current times. This style of clothing hasn’t been left in the past and people still go back to it and refer to it as a ‘modern’ way of dressing. I personally like these types of clothing or should say I find them ‘cute’. This is why it got my eye interested and made me want to talk about it.    
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The next section we visited was the ‘Sculpture’ area. It was filled with statues and pictures sculptured into a wall. I personally didn’t like this section too much as I’m not much into statues or naked man and woman nor do I enjoy drawing them. I moved out of the group to do some of my own searches. I went ahead and got to a head statue of Lord Elgin sculpted in marble by John Flaxman. (1755-1826)
He was a man associated with the ancient theatre and even though I didn’t especially like the statue, I really liked the history behind it. It is said to be one of the first ever British sculptures to be influenced by theatre and since I’m a fan of theatre, it got me interested.

The statue itself looks to be done rather ‘roughly’ with many rigid edges and not smoothness on the facial features. It could be that the statue is old and slowly eroded away, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. It was recently sculpted and even the statues from thousands of years ago still have their smoothness and fit shape. It seems that the rock which the statue is made off was a very difficult rock to carve and shape. If this is the case then the statue shows inspiration from the artist as he made it out of a very difficult rock to carve which shows difficulty and his hard work ship to make this statue.
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The next section we were to visit was a room with old electronics and items. Not as old as the Japanese culture remaining, but items from around 50 years ago. These included old radios, iPods and the very first computers. I was personally absorbed by this room as I’m a huge fan of old gadgets and rare items that are hard to access now days. The reason why I thought it would fit in my project was because they’re items that have developed into what we have at our current date. From looking at them, we can see where our radios and phones have come from and how they looked a couple of years ago. It gives us a shock of how quick the technology advanced and how the older models quickly went back to the past to our memory.

I got to see some of the first laptops which were named “Portable computer system: Sony ‘Vaio’”. Rather than naming them laptops, it was simply named a portable computer. It was made in 1999 which was still at the times when I was present but it must have been very difficult to take hold off. It highly resembles some of our current laptops but considering it was made so many years ago, the processor and quality of the video must have been very slow.  
This just show how quicly the technology rose in only 13 years and the laptops we see now days are fast and satisfy the user needs. It also shows that we no longer look back at the older laptops since the newer ones are so much better which leaves the 'Sony Vaio' in the past.

Another item that caught my interest was the old portable radios. One of them (nr14) was a 'Sony AM Radio Model' which was produced in the 1985's. The shape doesn't differ much from our current IPod’s and music players, but the pattern is far from what we have today. The cover reminds me of a credit card or an oyster. This could be the significance of travel and portability during the 1980's. The model came out in Japan and was customizable which means that you could make your own pattern and design for this radio. This could also explain why it looks so different from our current ones. You can also see how it only has 1 headphone socket. I've never seen a headset with only 1 earphone, but it seems it was in style during that time or a 2-way earphone wasn't yet developed. I think that this type of radio is still accessible in present days, but although they're old and serve less of a purpose they probably have a high cost. We might call them artifacts.

Some of the old technology items in the V & A Gallery

A bunch of shelves stuck together using several ropes.

Me drawing a responce to the old vacuum cleaner.

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The last section that we visited was the 'Portrait Painting' are. It was a small dark room filled with hundrets small portraits painted on a tiny are. They were about the size of a fist and smaller, but the detail was as if they were real. I found this section very interesting and thought that it would be good to link that with my memories project as the idea of painting someone in a tiny frame with so much detail shows a memory that will last forever. Similar to how people have a pocket watch with htier loved ones at the inner cover when you open it.
When you look closely at the painting, you can see all the small brush strokes which make the texture of the facial expressions and underline the realism of the piece. I'm also impressed on how detailed it is knowing that it was painted jundrets of years ago. It might have been created out of rare pigments and paints in their era which is why we can only see the queens and kinds in the portraits.


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One of the artists that I researched at the V & A is also an artist I will be using in my final piece. His name is
Arthur Bispo Do Rosário and he was a Brazilian artist who spent 50 years of his lifetime confined to the attic of a psychiatric institution and was freed due to his art. I explained why I chose him in the artist analysis section --> Arthur Bispo Do Rosario

 



3 comments:

  1. A very thorough account of your visit and interests. I would also like to see more comments where you consider possible pathways that could be developed for your instillation and don't forget to add the sketches you created on the trip!

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  2. This looks good, you should show more of your drawings that you did in the V&A

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  3. Excellent Adam- well done for adding a selection of your drawings. I hope that there will be influnce from this visit in your final response.

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