Should you be familiar with the inner workings of House of Kip, you will know our love for the automobile. Sleek, sexy and with a whole lot of character, one may say we are quite obsessed. And in the country where the timeless icons were first conceived and developed, England is surely an exemplary contributor to the cause. Think BMW, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin and Land Rover to name but a few.
Celebrating the much-celebrated conception of the car, the V&A Museum is exploring the role of the vehicle in shaping the world we live in today, and particularly so as we encounter another key turning point in automotive design.
Hosted by the V&A Museum’s Sainsbury Gallery, this exhibition will consider the car’s history. Though spanning a mere 130 years, this once radical vehicle has developed as one of the world’s most-cherish, controversial and iconic innovations.
Revolutonising manufacturing to further transform ergonomics and how we move and transport, the invention will forever pioneer and change our economies, environment and cities. Undoubtedly the driving force of change in the modern world, this exhibition is truly spectacular for something a little different.
Cars: Accelerating the Modern World fuses 15 divers cars to share fascinating stories about each of their design and both their influence and impact on the wider world. Encompassing rarely seen before cars, the exhibition includes the first-ever production car in existence, a flying car, a 1950s-concept car and a converted lowrider.
With few exhibited within the UK previously, their first-hand experience work in perfect contract with a variety of products, photography, film, fashion and graphics as means to underline connections to wider scopes of public life and design. Many of these cars have never been on show in the UK before, and their display will be uniquely juxtaposed with a diverse collection of products, fashion, graphics, photography and film, to draw connections to wider spheres of design and public life.
Acting as a looking-back-to-look-forward, the exhibition seeks to understand our past mechanical errors and judgements to facilitate an improved imagination of how we perceive card and our own movement in the future. Divided into three sections, the exhibition first incorporates Going Fast by considering automobiles and imagining a future world of liberalism and symbols of technological progress. The urge to go fast pushed not only automobile design, but also developed an aesthetic and visual culture that would go on to dominate the first half of the 20th century.
Making More ponders the role of the car with modern consumerism and the archetype of contemporary manufacturing to evolve car production companies into global powerhouses. First exploring Henry Ford’s first moving assembly line, this segment looks at the immense influence of car manufacturing, from how we think about work and production, to the threat of automation and unionisation.
The final cog in the wheel is marked by Shaping Space explores the car’s impression on the earth’s landscapes and respective nation-developing efforts. A poignant subject matter, Shaping Space seeks the influence cars have on the growth and our world’s later dependency on the global petrol economy, including vast masses of extraction to later escalate climate change. What are our environment alternatives and how much will lithium extraction indeed dominate the new electric economy.
On now until 19th April 2020, this exceedingly good exhibition is definitely one for everyone. See it now.
Cars: Accelerating the Modern World is exhibited at The Sainsbury Gallery at The Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 until 19th April 2020
vam.co.uk
