Intoart at the V & A
Six young artists immersed themselves in the collections of London’s V & A museum for six months with strikingly impressive results, says Simon Jarrett.
Intoart, the London visual arts organisation, teamed up with the V & A museum and the result was a new body of work from a fine group of artists with learning disabilities, inspired by the V and A collection. The six artists, working in both museum and studio, each produced a series of drawings based on a different part of the museum. In February this year they led walking tours around the V & A to explore the section they had worked in and explain its influence on their work.
Inspired initiative
This was a typically creative and inspired Intoart initiative, placing these promising young artists within the inspirational setting of one of the world’s greatest art and design collections. Working in the British, China, Glass and Ironwork galleries they handled objects, took photographs and then developed their own process to produce their artistic response to what they had seen. The walking tour format enabled the artists not only to explain the genesis of their own work but also to open up the collection to visitors. Each tour can be downloaded from the V & A website, printed and used on phones or tablets.
The final exhibition – displayed in a room at the V & A casually peppered with works by J M W Turner – was testament to the ethos of the project and the high artistic standards it both expected and achieved. The walking tours placed each artist in the spotlight, their job to explain to the public their own work, the works in the V & A collection and the interaction between the two. They responded, and it worked tremendously well.
Timeless and delightful
On the tour of the British gallery, seeing the rare 17th century household objects that had inspired Lisa Trim’s ink and pencil drawings gave her work a new meaning, which would not have been apparent if it had been seen out of context. Gazing back over three centuries at two dolls, a fan and a beautiful wooden toy cradle, she reinterpreted and brought them back to life. It was moving to see these objects, once part of the daily routines of 17th century families, reinvented and recreated in such a fond way. Particularly impressive was her version of the toy cradle, with its alphabet letters down the side. Placing it suspended against a black and grey background she caught its dark-wood depth using minimal colour and presented it for what it was – a timeless and delightful toy, instantly recognisable outside of its own time, speaking to us across the ages.
The work of Andre Williams, also in the British gallery, Philomena Powell and Salina Helene in the Ironwork and Glass galleries and Clifton Wright and Christian Ovonlen in the Architecture and China Gallery all produced similarly high quality, insightful work.
Intoart’s invitation to talented artists to immerse themselves in great art and respond to it has produced an inspired collection.
To read more about this exhibition, download the walking tours and see more of the art visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/i/intoart-drawing-tours/
More about Intoart at http://www.intoart.org.uk/studio/weblogs/Exhibitions/blog.htm
