The working life of Museum of London

Group visiting the design office. Click this link to see more photos from the project on Flickr.

Photos by Nick Landau

28th April 2009

This week we started a new community project with adults who attend art and museum studies part-time courses at Barnet College. The group are going to be working with Museum staff and artist Judith Hope over the next two months to create an art sculpture made out of goods that were traded across the Empire, particularly those that were imported into London. Some of these many goods included tea, coffee, spices, tabacco and silk. It will be the first time that most of us have ever used these goods as art materials, so it’s a bit scary, as well as being an exciting challenge.

What makes the project more exciting is that the artwork will be installed in a permanent gallery in a large under floor case which is about 2 metres long. Visitors will be able to walk over the case and children can bend right down to see close up detail. We have quite a challenge to make the artwork visually exciting. It also needs to portray the message that much of the growth of the Empire was due to exploitation of people and resources.

This artwork is part of the Museum of London’s exciting new galleries. The Galleries of Modern London will open in Spring 2010 and tell the story of London from 1667 to present day. This artwork will go into the Expanding City gallery, which will cover 1667 – 1850. Click on this link to find out more about the redevelopment.

In this first workshop Alex Werner, the curator of the Expanding City Gallery, gave a talk about the Museum’s redevelopment, and focussed on this gallery. It was useful for the group to know which themes and topics appear in the rest of the gallery. The group also had a tour of the Museum’s open galleries to learn a bit more about all of our collections .

David, one of the group members is writing part of this blog each week. Here he writes about his tour of the Museum:

‘The curation of the Museum of London’s historical facts combined both information with a passionate, imaginative and modern display. Timelines both indicated spicifics as well as homelife, agriculture and leisure. As we were taken around the museum indications of historical events had an electricity of colour, graphic design and ancient artefacts.”

5th May

Today we learnt more about the visual look of the Expanding City gallery by visiting the Museum’s design office and meeting Jayne Davis, the graphic designer. Jayne showed us the various colours, materials and designs utlised in the gallery. This will help us get a better creative feel for where our artwork will sit.

David, a group member writes:

‘The main exhibition became more of a realisation in the second week. The Museum of London’s new exhibit on the Empire was shown to us through a rough architectural prototype of the new galleries. Our artwork that is to be sunken in to the ground is central to the plan and was help provide visitors with a feel for with what had come from the other continents or colonies.

The artwork will use sugar, coffee, peppercorns and tea to construct a portrayal of the good and bad aspects of the Empire. We experimented with these materials which to me became quite a realisation. Using coffee to paint with was very interesting.’

The rest of today’s workshop was a chance to have a go at using various goods for the first time as art materials. These included coffee beans, coffee granules (used as a paint), tea leaves, sugar cubes, loose sugar, peppercorns, vanilla pods and more. It was a bit daunting at first, but once everyone got started the ideas flowed. It was amazing to see the various ways everyone used the materials.

Click here to see lots of photographs of the artworks we created.

Next week the group visit Museum of London Docklands on a research trip to learn more about the Empire and the transatlantic slave trade.