Super white exhibition

I may still be having confused fights with my new mac’s keypad (where is the ‘home’ button please?), but yesterday I had a play at furthering my ‘London chic’ side.  My bike’s just been fixed after a string of tedious punctures, which took a long time to fix since my bicycle capabilities stretch to removing the quick-release wheels.  Helpfully, a few friends have told me I’d be mad to cycle on London roads, which is tosh.

So I cycled off to the Super Contemporary exhibition at the Design Museum on the South Bank.  It’s essentially a big time line with designs, events, people and news that have shaped our perception of design that goes around the room, which is really quite nicely done and reminded me a bit of the Science Museum in the way that when I was younger I discovered that information stuff didn’t have to be dull.  It was pretty browsey and lightweight, which was quite nice because there were lots and lots of brightly coloured small things to look at (I am a sucker for brightly coloured things, especially if made out of paper it seems).

The nicest part was from a couple of companies asked to make maps of London.  A few were pretty standard – not bad, just the sort of thing I’d have leapt to do in a silly crafty girly way e.g. pictures stuck around parts of the map to indicate memories.  Airlift, a company I feel quite unintelligent not to have heard of, made a lovely map which ignored the logistics of London but was very impressive.  A hand-drawn St Pancras monster was roaring, small people were discussing cheese on the Eurostar, and ‘the Devil and his Cock’ made an appearance.  The photos are a bit full of reflections, but my favourite bits came out legibly.

This was a nice big sculpture of Trafalgar Square with a big raised garden field.  Nelson ends up being a statue, and there’s also some funky slides at the top.

There was also a chalkboard that said Protect me from my Protectors above it. We didn’t need protecting, so played noughts and crosses instead.

There was an upstairs with more design ‘stuff’ that centered around big clever designs – something about big modern designers pushing boats and stuff.  My favourite parts  of this section (and I suspect here that my version of good art isn’t the same as everyone else’s) were the child that sat on an installation, some dangling coat hangers, some sort of robot with page-tabs for shoulders, and the screen that said erection on it.  Unfortunately I couldn’t take a photo of this joy since the TV blurred and fuzzed at my camera, but I did of the child, much like a skulking anoraked man.

We then proceeded to spend as much time in the gift shop as in the exhibition. And then we went home. by which I mean the pub.