Wellcome Collection
So I went to the Wellcome Collection in Euston yesterday and it was probably the best exhibition I've ever been to. Mainly the permanent collection part with all of Henry Wellcome's bits and pieces. There was some great artifacts for sure but the best thing was the way it was displayed and the way the viewer interacted with the exhibit. There were drawers with extra information and for the display cases there were sort of cupboards which sat flush with the wooden wall and were very discreet, almost like you had to discover them, which had more detailed data about the articles being displayed in front of them (behind you if you were looking at he cupboard) and a little more history ad dates and stuff- kinda like some meta data or something the cases had enough information that you understood the artifacts (a guillotine blade for example) and then more information could be obtained which gave even more insight to the piece- (used in the french revolution, how many people it killed, the last person it killed, it was considered humane etc). The exhibition had the feeling that i want to embody in my work- wonder and discovery and levels of information and quality (everything was quite dark and there was a lot of wood on the walls and displays).
Henry Wellcome was an interesting guy too- he was a proper accumulator, in the collection is the first bit of money he ever earned- was it just for posterity or some foresight that he knew it would be interesting later on- the guy collected like a fiend and it is perhaps an interesting thing to think about money and collecting. The guy only got to have a collection because he had the space to put the things he had bought in. (I keep thinking about this private to institution type collection- the walsall gallery did it with their 'Peoples Exhibition' of th public's collections, it was ages ago and i never saw it but i would like to see it again- maybe i could set one up. So Wellcome had the passion and, not randomness or indiscriminancy, but the variety and diversity of a private collector but the money,space and influence of an institution.)
Carleman's Catalogue of Extraordinary Objects
This is a beautiful book of objects that this illustrator created. Some are amazing, some stupid, some witty, some just a bit shit, but there are some complete gems - i was going to post it just for kicks but maybe it has some bit of my project somewhere in it - maybe just the format and title. Anyway enjoy.
V&A Archives
I went to the annual open day at the V&A archives at Blythe House in Olympia. 
There was an interesting thing of refinement: the woman talking to us was an archivist, from the archives department, from the art and design department, from the word and image department, from the V&A. In a similar way the objects were at the bottom of a load of layers: building, room, shelf, box, foam, card, sleeve, paper, then object.
The open book is a conserved version of the book above it. The top book had loads of pictures stuck in with sellotape and this has eroded and died over time so that things are stuck together and the pictures become damaged. The conserved book is easier to navigate and and work from - indeed through the conservation process the images are more accessible and now some of the images have been displayed at the design museum and also the Cold War Modern exhibition - i think it's interesting, because i find it to be another level of context abstraction the images in the fading, old, ledger feel more honest and fit the pictures better than the sterilised conserved version.
There was a story told about how a bed had been offered from Garrick's family. On visiting the item in question the curator also discovered a number of other items which used to belong to Garrick and a collection of letters and documents pertaining to the heritage and acquisition of the bed, including, of note, an unpublished poem. The money to acquire these could not be given by the museum and so they went to the society of Garrick (these guys had money) and they whipped round and got the cash- and also in the process another museum piece was offered- this adds weight to my argument that things attract things- i think this might be worth revisiting.
A tour guide, Guy Baxter, described the archives as 'Some of our treasures'
The archivists seek to record through archiving.
The buildings were built originally as offices and so are not strong enough for the purpose so the archive shelves (which i wasn't allowed to take pictures of!) had to placed over the beam lines of the buildings- i like the idea of a collection dictating a space and also the other way round there's some kind of interesting relationship happening there.
Territories Map
This is the map i created for my map of my project so far. It is pretty much a glorieifed spider diagram- 25 words which can be linked most ways and any random 5 would create an interesting relationship and project. The map is firstly an illustration of my territory- this is the words. On the other side are various shapes of various sizes. The tool part of it starts when the viewer is asked to pick a set of 5 cards- do they pick all the cards of a certain shape, all the cards of a certain size ones, or the diagonals, the most aesthetic pattern or randomly. These choices then corespond to the words on the reverse creating new groupings. (The words on the reverse are also ordered (by shape) into 5 categories Curation: labeling, criteria, rhyming objects, display.
Frames and Boundaries: gaps, proximity, storage, horizontal space
Accumulation: repetition, gathering, acquisition, copying
The Collector: sequential, completion, validation, context abstraction
The Artifact: taxidermy, scale and proportion, typologies, sets and groups, specimen
At the moment these are also functioning as chapter headings for my context report but im pretty sure ill need to hack these down to a more managable size.
Freud's House
Went over to Freud's house in Finchley at the weekend. He only lived there for about a year of his life (he died shortly after leaving Nazi occupied Austria, in 1939) But importantly it houses his library, furniture and collections. His passion for collecting ancient artefacts, was second only to his addiction to cigars apparently- many small figurines were housed cabinets, shelves and noteably filling approximatley half of his desk- i'm going to refrain from talking about fetishism here or suggest that a historical item from some egyptian burial chamber is an absent phallus. Freud used his collection as a metaphor for psychoanalysis using it to show how conscious material wears away whilst the unconcious is relativley unchanging- i.e. in being buried, the artefacts in the room were preserved. There are very few things connecting Freud's collection together; the fact that the great man owned them is probably validation enough as to their criteria for being a collection, however they were all very old some up to 4500 years old, of either ancient near eastern, greco, egyptian, roman or chinese. The most interesting thing about this carefully accumulated, kept and displayed 'museum' is how subjective it is. Anyway, I think he's an interesting guy with an interesting collection- i hope i can say more later about it but this might be it.
Cigarette Cards (from some tea)
Another internet facilitated collection. I liked that i could collect both the cards and indirectly the moths and butterflies- two collections in one. Beautiful tiny tactile objects- i don't really like tea but I'd probably buy more of it if sweet little cards like this came in it. (probably not- maybe if they were total sets- then definitely- i guess the thing, as advertising or incentive hangs on the need to complete the set- do they expect you to get 25 boxes of this tea and then change- like one of those shit magazines? probably not- i guess they change the cards then- ahhh cunning- anyway it's all about sets and completion and how I've payed £2 and acquired it real easy and no tea- more fool you tea bosses- or more fool me because it was free to begin with and I've just payed for it, maybe i could get some comments on this one- i think it's more interesting than i first thought it was).
Stamps
I got this collection of 50 Princess Diana stamps from ebay - interesting?
