Postmodernism Exhibition at the V&A

Recently I visited the Postmodernism Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. I had previously been to Robotville Festival on the same day, so I didn't expect it to compete with seeing lots of cool robots, which it didn't :-) But having said that I did enjoy this exhibition too, as there were aspects of the show that I loved.

Initially the first thing that I found fascinating to watch was actually a projection which was used simply as an effect to show off some of the sculptures. I don't think it was part of any of the work itself. I found this to be quite mesmerizing, which was reminiscent of watching gently moving ocean waves lit by moonlight. This also reflected onto a mirrored sculpture which was wonderful to watch. I was also puzzled by this as I couldn't work out where the projection was coming from! I ended up having to ask an assistant, which was quite weird as he said that this was the first thing that he found fascinating too, and it also took him ages to figure out where the projection was coming from.

My next favourite part of this exhibition was watching a film clip from the film Blade Runner. While I've seen this film so many times in the past it was brilliant seeing this clip as it stirred my memory to re-watch the film again.

Another video which I found absolutely amazing to view was a clip from the documentary Koyannisquatsi directed by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass. This was projected onto a large screen, and I watched this video loop several times while I was there. At one point one of the assistants walked through a nearby door which made the screen move. This happened just as the focus of the video was on an image of a tower block which made the building appear as if it was breathing. This was totally accidental but it looked so effective and gave me ideas for doing a video projection onto a moving screen.

Even though there were underlying dystopian messages in this video extract, I found it so beautiful to watch too. I came away wanting/needing to see all of this film, which I now have :-)

Click here  for link to the Postmodernism Exhibition at the V&A.