Hasta La Ideas

Contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have turned five galleries at the V&A museum in London into the apartment of a fictional architect for an exhibition that opens next month.

The V&A invited Elmgreen & Dragset to develop an installation for its former textile galleries, which have been closed to the public for several years.

The artists appropriated over 100 objects from the museum’s collections and combined them with their own artworks and antique market purchases to create a mock up of a domestic interior.

“Making this exhibition is like creating a detailed set for a film, but with access to the incredible collections of the V&A to choose from,” said the artists. “While selecting objects to furnish the apartment we began to envision pieces of dialogue between characters that we could imagine might inhabit the space.”

To accompany the set design, Elmgreen & Dragset have written a script that describes the lifestyle of the disillusioned retired architect who inhabits the space.

Visitors will be given a copy of the script and invited to wander through the rooms, interacting with character’s furniture and possessions so they can better understand the societal issues of ageing, disappointment and alienation that inspired the story.

“We are excited to be working with two of the world’s leading contemporary artists on this ambitious project,” said V&A director Martin Roth. “The result will be unsettling and provoking and above all will present the V&A’s collections in a radically new and memorable way for our visitors.”

The exhibition opens to the public on 1 October 2013 and will continue until 2 January 2014.

Elmgreen & Dragset are known for their subversive sculptures and installations, which draw on diverse influences including social politics, performance and architecture. Previous installations by the duo include a sculpture of a boy on a rocking horse on top of the vacant fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square and a full scale replica of a Prada boutique built in the Texan desert.

For the London Design Festival, the V&A is currently showing a set design depicting a dinner party in progress by designers Scholten & Baijings, an installation of 5000 paper windmills that fills an enormous doorway, and a colourful chandelier that descends from the ceiling of its main hall.

Recent exhibitions at the V&A include an overview of fashion influenced by London’s clubbing scene of the 1980s and an exhibition dedicated to David Bowie memorabilia.

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Photography is by Stephen White, courtesy of the artists and Victoria Miro, London © Elmgreen & Dragset.

Here’s some more information from the V&A:

Tomorrow – Elmgreen & Dragset at the V&A In partnership with AlixPartners 1 October 2013 – 2 January 2014

The V&A has commissioned a major site-specific installation over five galleries by leading contemporary artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Opening in October 2013, Tomorrow will transform the V&A’s former textile galleries into an apartment belonging to a fictional, elderly and disillusioned architect.

The installation will feature over 100 objects from the V&A’s collections, which will sit alongside works by the artists, as well as items sourced from antique markets. The juxtaposition of objects, which will be arranged as a grand domestic interior, will create ambiguity and raise questions about cultural heritage. Martin Roth, V&A Director, said: “We are excited to be working with two of the world’s leading contemporary artists on this ambitious project. The result will be unsettling and provoking and above all will present the V&A’s collections in a radically new and memorable way for our visitors.”

Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibition Tomorrow will appear like a set for an unrealised film. To accompany it, the artists have written a script, which will be available to visitors as a printed book. The drama centres on a retired architect who had great vision but very little success in his professional life. In his twilight years, and with the family fortune long gone, he is forced to sell his inherited home and all his possessions. The script comments on issues of ageing, disappointment and alienation in today’s society.

Within the domestic setting, visitors will act as uninvited guests, able to curl up in the architect’s bed, recline on his sofa, or rifle through books placed by the artists to hint at the imagined events that could have taken place here.

Tomorrow will examine interests that have abided throughout the artists’ careers – those of redefining the way in which art is presented and experienced, issues around social models and how spaces and objects both inflict on and reflect our behavioural patterns. Such ideas are visible in many of the artist duo’s previous exhibitions, including The Welfare Show at Serpentine Gallery in 2006, The Collectors at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and The One and The Many at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2011.

Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset said: “On one of our early visits to the V&A to discuss the show, we encountered the former textile galleries which were being used for storage and closed to the public. When we found these spaces we knew right away what we wanted to do. Making this exhibition is like creating a detailed set for a film, but with access to the incredible collections of the V&A to choose from. While selecting objects to furnish the apartment we began to envision pieces of dialogue between characters that we could imagine might inhabit the space. So we wrote a script. It was sort of a reversed process where the props in our film set initiated the narrative. Now it’s our hope that visitors will interact freely with this set and discover their own clues as to who our fictional and quite eccentric inhabitant might be.”

Elmgreen & Dragset have worked closely with V&A curator Louise Shannon to research and select objects from the V&A collections.

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