Museum of Broken Relationships ★★★★
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| Aug 26 |
As summertime flings drown in fall’s rain, the Museum of Broken Relationships brings its international tour to London’s Covent Garden, filling our last panting dog days with heartache.
Winner of the 2011’s EMF Kenneth Hudson Award for most daring, innovative European Museum Project, the exhibition spans two venues and features objects of past relationships (donated from London’s community as well as pieces from its permanent collection in Croatia) with accompanying wall text listing the length of the relationship and a story about each item. Some couples lasted days, others decades, and the anecdotes range from poetic to cheesy and humorous to bitter, but together form a quirky collection of objects laden with emotional baggage. Despite its subject matter, the Museum provides a pensive and uplifting collection by allowing people to unburden themselves of emotional wreckage through creation and the chance to free themselves from items harboring nostalgic kryptonite.
The collection also highlights the uniquely human trait of attaching sentimental value to objects, and questions why we continue to save certain things, be them an under knee prosthesis, stun gun, or a red ribbon, while asking viewers to reflect on their own trophies of lost love. These exhibited objects also provide insight into the modern notion of “artifacts” in our age of materialism, as kitsch is anthropomorphized by emotional ruin to demonstrate the symbolic power of heart-clenching teddy bears and grinning garden gnomes.
Original works by commissioned artists add to the eclectic environment, with Alice Bray’s white paper cut-outs a delicate and whimsical metaphor for the fragility of love. The universal theme and range of the collection should appeal to most people, whether they camped out for the Royal Wedding or groan each time they hear “Girl on the Platform Smile,” by providing a poignant memorial to the wonderful mess love leaves behind.
Running until 4th September at Tristan Bates Theatre and 38 Earlham Street. Tickets are £3.50 and remain valid within a week of purchase.
http://new.brokenships.com/
http://www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk/
Winner of the 2011’s EMF Kenneth Hudson Award for most daring, innovative European Museum Project, the exhibition spans two venues and features objects of past relationships (donated from London’s community as well as pieces from its permanent collection in Croatia) with accompanying wall text listing the length of the relationship and a story about each item. Some couples lasted days, others decades, and the anecdotes range from poetic to cheesy and humorous to bitter, but together form a quirky collection of objects laden with emotional baggage. Despite its subject matter, the Museum provides a pensive and uplifting collection by allowing people to unburden themselves of emotional wreckage through creation and the chance to free themselves from items harboring nostalgic kryptonite.
The collection also highlights the uniquely human trait of attaching sentimental value to objects, and questions why we continue to save certain things, be them an under knee prosthesis, stun gun, or a red ribbon, while asking viewers to reflect on their own trophies of lost love. These exhibited objects also provide insight into the modern notion of “artifacts” in our age of materialism, as kitsch is anthropomorphized by emotional ruin to demonstrate the symbolic power of heart-clenching teddy bears and grinning garden gnomes.
Original works by commissioned artists add to the eclectic environment, with Alice Bray’s white paper cut-outs a delicate and whimsical metaphor for the fragility of love. The universal theme and range of the collection should appeal to most people, whether they camped out for the Royal Wedding or groan each time they hear “Girl on the Platform Smile,” by providing a poignant memorial to the wonderful mess love leaves behind.
Running until 4th September at Tristan Bates Theatre and 38 Earlham Street. Tickets are £3.50 and remain valid within a week of purchase.
http://new.brokenships.com/
http://www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk/
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