Disobedient Objects

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The exhibits on display are perhaps more objects for disobedience, rather than disobedient objects. But that’s no bad thing, especially as it accomplishes a richer, more challenging display than last year’s disappointing Art Turning Left: 1789-2013 at Tate Liverpool. We start in the 70s and the rise of neo-liberalism; among the earliest objects in the show are Chilean appliqued textiles produced by women in workshops during the Pinochet regime. These documented the social realities of the disappearances, the tortures, the economic hardships. These worked on a number of levels.

In the same section of the show we have “bloc books”, painted shields in the form of giant works of literature and philosophy made by students protesting at education cuts. When they demonstrated, the students were effectively being defended by culture, and by striking the shields, the police not only invoked the destruction of books but were also forced into a performance without realising it.

A World to Win: Posters of Revolution and Protest

The objects that will be exhibited were created by non-professional designers, mostly using craft methods or adhoc manufacturing processes.

Disobedient objects have a history as long as social struggle itself. Ordinary people have always used them to exert counterpower, and object-making has long been a part of social movement cultures alongside music, performance and the visual arts. While these other mediums of protest have been explored before, this exhibition is the first to look broadly at material culture’s role in radical social change. It identifies these objects as part of a people’s history of art and design. The exhibition begins in the late 1970s, taking as its starting point the cycle of global social struggles beginning in that period which engaged with the emerging political terrain of neoliberalism and new technologies. Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea – but new observations demand a radical rethink November 15, 2023 The title of the exhibition at the entrance was created from cable-ties affixed to an upside down crowd-control fence hung at the entrance of the gallery space. A large-scale representation of the history of barricades dominates the doors of the Porter Gallery. Each individual panel features one particular moment, from the French Revolution to the latest barricades seen in the Arab Spring and Ukraine.Made by the Treatment Rooms Collective: Luke Allen, Gary Drostle, Mark Drostle, Eoghan Ebrill, Linda Griffiths, Gabrielle Harvey-Smith, Liam Heyhow, Peter Henham, Kevin O’Donohue, Carrie Reichardt, Thayen Rich, Sian Wonnish Smith, Cerdic Thomas, Liam Thomas, Karen Wydler, Mark Wydler As with all successful projects, time for comprehensive, collaborative planning is fundamental. Complex objects, second guessing the unknown and tight deadlines can add considerably to workloads. The lenders (some of whom needed to remain anonymous) and the object types were a little more unconventional than usual. For instance, we knew many of the objects had been produced in reaction to a particular event, made with materials at hand and, due to their use, were potentially quite fragile. Some of the challenges raised during early-stage group discussions included:

Others are propaganda, such as a trade union banner or the 1986 leaflet (produced by London Greenpeace and, it later turned out, an undercover police officer) that sparked the interminable McLibel trial. Images: Victoria and Albert Musem, London, Jonathan Slaff, Oriana Eliçabe/Enmedio.info, Immo Klink, Martin Melaugh, Ed Hall, Andy Dao and Ivan Cash, Institute for Applied Autonomy, Blanca Garcia, George Lange We wanted to show the collective power these domestic objects can have when grabbed and repurposed with political intent," says Gavin Grindon, co-curator of Disobedient Objects, an exhibition that gathers together tools of protest from around the world. While shows of activist art are not uncommon, this is the first major exhibition to focus on the actual instruments of direct action. As co-curator Catherine Flood says, "It is design taken out of the hands of designers." As such, it has a refreshingly frank power, a collection of tools made or redeployed for specific – and often desperate – ends. Disobedient Objects goes beyond the political posters that usually represent social movement in museums, presenting high-tech objects such as drones for filming demonstrations as well as handcrafted items such as placards and textiles that reveal the stories behind protests. Icon spoke to the exhibition’s co-curator, Gavin Grindon.

Closed Exhibition – Disobedient Objects

But is this yet another co-opting of the counter-culture by the establishment? As I arrived, my scepticism was challenged by two panels of ceramic collage flanking the museum’s entrance. Commissioned from the West London artist, Carrie Reichardt, they each depict a protestor holding up a shield decorated to look like a book cover against the baton-wielding figures of riot police with fifty pound notes collaged in their visors. The book-shields bear the slogans ‘History is a Weapon’, ‘Nothing is inevitable, Everything is Possible’ and ‘Power to the People’, ‘Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, Rather it is a hammer to shape it’, and seemed to announce that disobedience was not only possible, but also desirable. Made from scraps of material, these were sold, so provided economic support, and in the act of gathering to make them, the women found solidarity and collective strength. We didn’t go ahead with this idea in the end, and everything in this particular display case would sit on its own bespoke Oriented strand board (OSB), which is a material that appears frequently in the final exhibition. It would be good to know more about what worked and how well. Some of the movements represented were spectacularly successful, such as the suffragettes, gay rights, Solidarnosc and the anti-apartheid campaigns, whereas protests against what is now called neoliberalism, their themes remarkably consistent over the decades, don't seem to have got very far. You wonder to what degree design played a role in both successes and failures. There is, finally, an unintended consequence of the proximity of artistic and political radicalism – it's possible to blur one with the other and be too easily satisfied with something that looks as if it is changing the world, when it's not.

The 1989 Met. Museum poster has been periodically updated by the Guerrilla Girls. The subtitle for the 2012 reworking now reads: ‘Less that 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female’. The iconic Met. Museum poster is accompanied by correspondences and gorilla masks in the Disobedient Objects exhibition. The presence of their work is attracting the attention of a diverse audience. The costumed mannequins have proved to be a source of fascination for young girls in particular; the monumental forms are symbols of strength and ambition. The Guerrilla Girls have supported the exhibition with a late-night visit to the V&A. They retrospectively described the exhibition Disobedient Objects as ‘really outside the box’. They continue to wear the notorious gorilla masks as the ‘conscience of the art world’. In other news, two striking commissions: the designers Barber Osgerby are to design the inside and outside of the new Crossrail trains, which, after decades of British trains having been less beautifully designed than the average vacuum cleaner, is a step forward. And Goldsmiths, University of London, incubator of much of BritArt, has chosen the young architectural collective Assemble to design a public gallery on their New Cross campus to show the work of international artists, students and staff. Sadly, this is my final post on the museum blog for Disobedient Objects…but before I move on to new adventures, I’d like to give you a little glimpse into more of the behind-the-scenes work involved in the run up to Disobedient Objects. I am going to focus a little bit into two very simple mounts I made prior to the show’s opening last month. Each section panel is printed on a unique material all of which are cheap, mundane and most-importantly used in the making of the objects on show: fabric, stainless steel, cardboard, plastic, tarpaulin and OSB board. A textile depicting a weeping mother, chained hands, falling doves and the penetrating eye of the secret police – one of many made by women during Pinochet’s rule in ChileThe V&A is generally recognised as an institution of empire, the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, an amassing since its founding in 1852 of the creative heritage of industrial civilisation. So it’s quite extraordinary to encounter in its midst, like a snake coiled inside a Harrods’ picnic hamper, an exhibition celebrating the objects deployed during more than four decades of international protest and political activism, the “art and design from below” never usually accorded gallery space. After this photograph was taken, each mount was then taken off to be lacquered and left to dry for 24 hours. I then threaded shrinkable tubing onto the wire and moulded these evenly into place using a heat gun, which was done to avoid any metal snagging against the fabric of the doll. Testing out the mount in the museum workshop. The total visitor figures for ‘Disobedient Objects’ during its six-month display at the V&A was 416,867. There was no damage to any objects or need to introduce any contingency measures. The comprehensive planning and discussion which began at the V&A continued with tour venues to ensure all subsequent installs, de-installs and displays ran smoothly. Weekly updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen Awards