out and about :: ldf13 at the v&a

The V&A is the “hub” of the London Design Festival for the fifth year running – a collaboration that sees LDF commissioning installations that fit within and around the existing V&A collection – as LDF Director Ben Evans said: “We don’t have blank walls in empty exhibition spaces.” But actually, I think that’s what makes LDF at the V&A interesting and this year, they have really embraced this ‘constraint’ and used the installations to highlight the incredible design that is already there.

From top to bottom, left to right:

• 28.280 by Omer Arbel is made from 280 Bocci 28 pendants and hangs from the highest point of the V&A spanning the entire height of the museum. Apart from being stunning in its own right, it draws your eye up to a part of the V&A you might never have noticed otherwise. (Have a look at the Bocci website for a ‘making of’ slide show.)
• The Moleskine Sketch Relay involved 70 London-based designers each filling five pages of the Moleskine Japanese Album with their response to the LDF13 theme “design is here, there and everywhere” before passing it on to the next designer. After this exhibition the notebooks will be donated to Lettera27, a non-profit organisation that promotes education, literacy and access to knowledge.
• I shared Ross Lovegrove‘s selection for God Is In The Details yesterday – here are Stephen Webster‘s and Paul Cocksedge‘s contributions – the latter involves viewing visitors to the V&A as if they were busts, as LDF Director Ben Evans kindly demonstrates!
• Above and below Ben is the Garden of Russolo by Yuri Suzuki, a sound-installation that distorts your voice and plays it back to you, just tucked in the bottom of a stairwell.
• Simon Pummell‘s Atlas for Animate Bodies is spellbinding and definitely worth seeking out. Simon is a filmmaker who teaches at an art college that no longer has life drawing on the curriculum, so this is both an exploration of what the life drawing of the future might be – and an investigation into the idea that the inside of our bodies is no longer hidden until we die – it’s now easily accessible to anybody from doctors to airport security staff.
• Underneath is Najla El Zein‘s Wind Portal, marking the border of the old V&A and the new extension which enclosed an outside space to turn it into gallery space. The light and breeze highlight the transition between inside and outside. LDF Deputy Director Max Fraser asked Najla if each one of the 5,000 paper windmills was handmade. “Of course,” she replied.
• Scholten & Baijings have created The Dinner Party in the Music Room rescued from Norfolk House, creating a place setting for each of their imagined guests, fabricating all the food from scratch, and even commissioning music made using their products – the attention to detail is staggering and really brings this room to life.
• The three finalists in “the chair of chairs for the library of libraries” competition to find a new chair for the Bodleian library in Oxford, by Matthew Hilton, Barber Osgerby and Amanda Levete, sit at the top of a staircase.
• Zoe Brewer tests out Ally Capellino‘s Bums on Seats, eight Bauhaus tubular stacking chairs adapted to suit different sitting positions.
• And finally, a cork installation called “The progressive extension of the field of individual development and experience” by FAT Architecture, runs across a bridge you might not otherwise have crossed.

The V&A is worth exploring at any time of year, but as the record 111,538 visitors during LDF12 show, it’s particularly special during the London Design Festival.