- Venue
- Victoria & Albert Museum
- Location
Following on from Stephen Jones’ visually stunning ‘Hats- An Anthology,’ ‘Telling Tales’ at the V&A again creates a space for pure aesthetic indulgence. The exhibition is comprised of three clearly defined environments that showcase examples of contemporary furniture, ceramics and lighting design themed on fantasy and narrative.
The first room entitled ‘The Forest Glade,’ is where we begin our story. It contains a selection of beautiful objects heavily inspired by nature and fairytale. Highlights include Tord Boontje’s ornate and delicate ‘Fig Leaf Wardrobe,’ with references to the Biblical and to C.S. Lewis, and Wieki Somers’ wonderfully subversive ‘Bath Boat.’ Each object is compartmentalised between sheer screens depicting tree branches, and our path is set to the sound of birds in flight.
From the pastoral to the domestic, the next stage in our journey is ‘The Enchanted Castle,’ where the sound of ticking clocks permeate the space and a sense of history is evoked. Here, highlights include Sebastian Brajkovic’s stuttering ‘Lathe Chair VIII,’ reminiscent of the earliest attempts at photography, and Jeroen Verhoeven’s ‘Cinderella Table,’ a fluid and organic object carved from a great big lump of solid marble. This environment is lined with a mirrored material which serves to both extend and warp the space, setting off the glittering objects in the manner of an Aladdin’s cave.
Shifts in scale, unlikely juxtapositions of form and material, and objects which appear familiar but are materially altered: so far this is the stuff of pure fairytale. It comes as a bit of a shock therefore, that the end of our archetypal fairy story jumps to a section entitled ‘Heaven and Hell,’ which attempts to address design in relation to Freudian psychoanalysis. Whilst there is undoubtedly a connection between fantasy and the subconscious, the exhibition seems to have completely lost the plot, so to speak, in this third and final room. Whilst some of the objects are interesting, notably ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ by Kelly McCallum, there is a marked difference in quality not only in the works but in the exhibition design of this last section. It consists of matt black painted boards, red neon lighting and spy holes cut through the boards to view the objects. Given the opulence and thoughtfulness of the first two sections, ‘Heaven and Hell’ conceptually and aesthetically jars with the rest of the exhibition, and feels almost like a different one entirely.
The first two rooms invite awe and wonder, and are designed sensitively to enrich and support the objects that they contain. The forest and the castle are pure escapist fantasy spaces, with the type of dark undercurrents you would hope from such a story. These works sit cohesively and do indeed seem to, “call on a pool of shared experience,” as the interpretation notes. However the third room lacks not only the theatrical splendour of the rest of the exhibition but also the conceptual and narrative framework. The story of ‘Telling Tales’ unfortunately lacks a happy ending.
