If you’re planning a Scottish staycation for next year, maybe consider Scotland’s sunniest city, Dundee. One of the main attractions, the new V&A museum and gallery on the city’s seafront, has announced their exhibitions for 2022-2023 and from the sounds of it, they’re definitely worth stopping by for.
Plastic: Remaking Our World
29 October 2022 to 5 February 2023
Plastic: Remaking Our World will chart the changing fortunes of a material with a more than 150-year history, encouraging visitors to think afresh about the promise and problems of this extraordinary material.
The exhibition will ask the question ‘How did we get here?’ beginning with the innovation of a material that now has global dominance. It will present the story of plastic from invention to ubiquity, from the history of what was once considered a magical material to the challenge of plastic pollution today as one of the world’s most urgent issues. The exhibition will feature prototypes, new technologies, and cutting-edge materials as designers grapple with a material that has changed our world.
The exhibition will feature product design, graphics, architecture and fashion from the collections of the V&A and Vitra Design Museum, as well as collections all over the world. This is the first exhibition co-produced by V&A Dundee, the Vitra Design Museum and MAAT, with consultant curators from V&A South Kensington.
Tartan
2 April to 3 September 2023
A radical new look at one of the world’s best-known fabrics, Tartan will celebrate the global story of a unique pattern which has connected communities worldwide, expressed tradition, revolt and diversity, and inspired playful and provocative design. It is a complex, rich, and sometimes painful history unequalled by any other cloth or pattern. Tartan is a textile which is adored and derided, inspiring great works of art and design, and representative of unity and dissent, tradition and rebellion.
While originating in textile traditions, tartan has also been an inspiration for, and incorporated into, art and design cultures including architecture, product design, fashion, film, fine art, and performance. Tartan has become a global symbol of unity and revolution, and the exhibition will explore the incredible impact that the textile has had on fashion and design around the world up to the present day.
This is the first major exhibition curated by V&A Dundee, with consultant curator Jonathan Faiers of the University of Southampton, UK.
Leonie Bell, Director of V&A Dundee, said: “Design is a critical part of everyone’s lives and as Scotland’s design museum we engage with design in all sorts of ways, from celebrating the wonder and innovation it brings to encouraging debate about its potential to address challenges.
“Our major exhibitions for late 2022 and 2023, Plastic: Remaking Our World and Tartan, cover two different but equally powerful areas of design. Plastic: Remaking Our World will explore how design can make powerful promises for the future that can turn into environmental challenges, while also looking to design’s role in solving the global problem of plastic pollution.
“Tartan will be the first major exhibition curated by V&A Dundee, staged during the fifth year since the museum opened. It is a timely opportunity to look again at this historic and famous cloth, and the ways notions of Scottishness and tradition have been designed and subverted over centuries through one fabric. Tartan will also explore the global and enduring role of tartan today as a cloth that is loved, loathed, and lives on.
“These exhibitions build on Night Fever: Designing Club Culture that is on show currently and Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer that opens in February 2022 to celebrate the incredible diversity and potential of design. We can’t wait to welcome visitors to each of these major exhibitions.”
