'At the End of the Day’, hanging, Natasha Kerr, 2007
On Monday CocoThom were on location in London. We decided to hit the V&A Museum. We went thinking that the Grace Kelly exhibition was on, but it wasn't, it starts on the 17th of April to 26 September 2010. So we'll be making another stop for that, but in the mean time, we thought to check out what "fashiony" thing the V&A had on. Emily then suggested that we should go to the QUILT exhibition. Much to my surprise she was serious. You can find out information about dates and prices as they do vary at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/quilts-1700-2010/.
So this is what I thought about the exhibition. I found it really humorous, nothing to do with the quilts, just me being there, because it is all about QUILTS. I would never have went of my accord. It was a good experience, even though I was acting like a kid at some points. Like dissing some of the work that I didn't like, mainly saying "I don't like the thing in the middle", which funny enough, would be the main focal point, but I was just being truthful, also I wasn't just saying all these things to myself, I was saying them to Emily. However getting past all of that, it was good. Intense, intricate and skillful are only a few words that can describe the workmanship that went into making these quilts. I was more impressed with the older quilts, the earliest being from the 1700's, which amazes me alone, to be beautiful and intact. Some of the modern one's didn't interest me at all, as I thought they were trying to be art pieces first, rather than a quilt, which then in itself is a work of art.
There was a number of ways in which the quilts were displayed. Some as wall hangings, some on beds, some with audio, one even had a video accompanying it, which was amusing to me. This particular quilt was made by the hands of prisoners, from blah blah blah prison (don't need to go into details). It was a well constructed, highly detailed quilt. You would really need to know your stuff, to be doing the type of stitches that were seen on this quilt. I don't know why the audio was there, it really freaked me out, I was slightly confused, to why someone was talking about nothing, because they weren't talking quilts anyway. I felt it wasn't needed, I also felt that the person on the audio, was having a private conversation and I shouldn't be listening.
Something happened that was quite funny. There was this random painting on the wall, amongst the hanging quilts. When we ere walking round, Emily started looking at the painting, I came up right behind her and said "NO DON'T LOOK AT THAT, YOU DIDN'T PAY TO SEE THAT". We both chuckled as we walked.
Set of Chintz bed hangings (detail), 1730-50
I do recommend it to all quilt lovers and to people who have an appreciation for delicate, intricate, crazy needle-work skills I wished I had. Even though I was skeptical about this exhibition at first, because I thought it was going to be boring, I did make my own fun, but I did secretly enjoy it, for all the wrong reasons.
Coco
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