V&A Museum - Disobedient objects

I'm up early this morning as I'm catching the 7.30 am train from Axminster to Waterloo (a journey of approximately 3 hours) to join an OCA study at the V&A museum in London to look at the "Disobedient Objects exhibition with tutor Christian. Any spelling mistakes are due to the early hour I need to get up.  More later.


23rd November 2014

I travelled up to London by train on Friday 21st and found the train became very crowded the nearer we got to London.  In the end people were having to stand as it was so full.

The group was met by the tutor Christian Lloyd who introduced himself and the group to each other.  There were seven or eight of us from a wide range of places, from Cornwall to north London to Austria, but all women which I have never had before.

We agreed to spend approximately an hour in what was quite a small exhibition near the front door of the museum and then repair to the cafe to eat, drink and discuss how we felt about the exhibition as a whole and what had impacted on us as individuals.

The entrance to the exhibition was lined with copies of books which had featured conflict and prejudice such as 'To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde and other such stories.  (See image below).

The whole point of the exhibition was to highlight conflicts that had taken place both in the pas and at the present time.  The exhibits showed ways that people had done their best to thwart authority and cause disruption and political change.  These ways ranged from simple embroidered panels with hidden messages, plastic bottle masks to avoid the worst of tear gas grenades, to a death mask of a political prisoner made immediately after he had been put to death then paraded around towns under political tyranny including, would you believe, Manchester.

The death mask can be seen above the windscreen

One of the things that stayed in my mind was that of an Edwardian tea cup and saucer used to show how the emancipation of women was involved them from the lowliest up to high society families.  I know the cup and saucer is only small in this picture but it came to mean so much to so many of the population.  Even today women and girls are still fighting prejudice in all walks of life.

One of the funniest things was to see our tutor, Christian, learning to crochet balaclavas to use as a disguise when part of a demonstration.  Even he admitted it was bizarre.

Christian learning to crochet, image courtesy of Mirjam Bollag Dondi

I have been retired since 2009 but during my working life I have met prejudice especially as I have worked in mainly man orientated environments.  You are always between 'a rock and a hard place' as if you protest at the way women are treated in the work place, you're a trouble maker and if you let misogynist attitudes prevail then you are making life harder for both yourself and those women who follow on behind you.  Personally, I have never been a woman who can let prejudice go and will take any miscreant to task to make it a better more equal place for everyone.

Prior to my retirement I worked in further education for 10 years teaching IT and Communications.  I was very saddened to hear the attitudes of some of the girls in my classes (aged mainly between 16-25) and how they said they couldn't be bothered to vote.  I can only hope, even when I explained about the hard fought battle by our ancestors to get us the vote, that later in life they will exercise  their democratic right and use their vote whatever their persuasion. 

it was a very thought provoking exhibition, one that still lingers with me.  In the foyer of the exhibition was a map showing where there is still conflict around the world and it was quite an eye opener to see that there were so many areas still unable to resolve conflict in their countries.