It’s the last few days to catch the Design Museum’s fascinating ‘Fear and Love – Reactions to a Complex World’ exhibition, which closes this Sunday evening.
The exhibition contains eleven installations by some of the most innovative and thought-provoking designers and architects of our time, among them fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, architects OMA and Andrés Jaque, and designer Christien Meindertsma whose ‘Fibre Market’ is illustrated above.
Their works, commissioned specifically for the November 2016 opening of the Design Museum’s new venue in Kensington, explore a spectrum of issues that define our time, including networked sexuality, sentient robots, slow fashion and settled nomads.
This multidisciplinary and global exhibition not only captures the mood of the present, but also stimulates critical debate. The works demonstrate how design is deeply connected not just to commerce and culture, but to urgent underlying issues – issues that inspire fear and love.
It’s been well received by lots of media. Time Out called it an, “ambitious new show, packed with food for thought.” The Guardian said: “From the shocking secrets of dating apps to 3D death masks and the meet’n’greet robot, this is a fun ramble through the zeitgeist.”
Fear and Love allows the Design Museum to revisit a subject it covered in its inaugural exhibition in 1989. Back then, Commerce and Culture was about the value of industrial products.
According to Justin McGuirk, Chief Curator at the Design Museum, “Three decades later, we now take that value for granted. Fear and Love goes further, and proposes that design is implicated in wider issues that reflect the state of the world. By inviting these designers to create installations with such an open brief, the museum presents itself as a laboratory of ideas, and a place for absorbing how the world is changing.”
Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan is the only UK-based designer in the exhibition. Working with technology giant Intel, last year he produced a series of wearable devices that detect your emotions and project them for the outside world to see as part of his Spring Summer 2017 fashion show. Chalayan has adapted this for an installation entitled Room Tone, presenting two wearable devices that address the idea of repressed emotions, exploring the everyday anxieties connected to city-living, from fear of terrorism to sexual desire.
The Design Museum is the world’s leading museum devoted to architecture and design. Its work encompasses all elements of design, including fashion, product and graphic design. Since it opened its doors in 1989, the museum has displayed everything from an AK-47 to high heels designed by Christian Louboutin. It has staged over 100 exhibitions, welcomed over five million visitors and showcased the work of some of the world’s most celebrated designers and architects including Paul Smith, Zaha Hadid, Jonathan Ive, Miuccia Prada, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray and Dieter Rams.
Exhibition details
Title: Fear and Love. – Reactions to a Complex World
End: Sunday 23 April 2017
Doors open: 10:00 to 18:00 daily. Last admittance 17:00
Viewing time: The recommended time for viewing this exhibition is 1 hour.
Venue: Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street London, W8 6AG
Admission: Adult £14, Student/concession £10.50*, Child (6 – 15 years) £7, Children under 6 years free. Family and group prices available too. Members free.
Tickets: designmuseum.digitickets.co.uk/
Venue and event info: designmuseum.org
