Hasta La Ideas

Illustration collective Le Gun has designed an installation and limited edition print for a new exhibition opening at London’s V&A Museum.

Memory Palace opens on June 18 and is the V&A’s first graphics and illustration exhibition for nearly a decade. Exploring the link between visual arts and storytelling, it includes 20 illustrators and designers’ interpretations of an original story by author Hari Kunzru, commissioned for the project.

The story is a dystopian vision of a future London, in which the global information infrastructure has been wiped out by a storm and books, or any form of remembering, are banned. Kunzru’s narrative follows a renegade group of ‘memorialists’ trying to revive the art of memory.

The exhibition features work by an impressive line-up of artists including Hansje van Halem, Oded Ezer, Eric Kessels and Luke Pearson, who have produced prints, type, short film and hand-painted tiles that re-imagine parts of Kunzru’s text.

Le Gun has also produced a 3D installation for Memory Palace and one for the V&A shop (pictured). One of the illustrations on display at the shop has been made into a limited edition print priced at £75 (below).

Le Gun was founded by Neal Fox, Chris Bianchi, Bill Bragg, Robert Rubbish, Matthew Appleton, Alex Wright and Stephanie von Reiswitz, graduates of London’s Royal College of Art. As well as murals and 3D artworks, they produce a self-titled magazine, and were commissioned to design the shop installation by V&A visual merchandiser Charlene Betteridge, who was impressed by their work for the exhibition.

“Le Gun showed themselves to be a fascinating and incredibly talented collective who have been able to, as a group, develop an incredibly distinctive style – one that would work brilliantly in the shop’s environment,” says Betteridge.

The shop installation also responds to Kunzru’s text, and features literal illustrations of scenes such as a flooded city and a ruined banquet, as well as more abstract interpretations of the author’s post-apocalyptic city.

Memory Palace will run from June 18 until October 20. An interview with the exhibition’s curators and a look at the work included is featured in the June issue of Creative Review, out now. For visitor information, visit vam.ac.uk. To view more of Le Gun’s work, visit legun.co.uk

Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.

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