Dismantling the Biba Exhibition

Last weekend saw the closing of Barbara Hulanicki: Biba and Beyond, the major fashion design exhibition that was running for several months upstairs at Brighton Museum. So I took advantage of my access badge to go and have a nose around today, when the museum was closed to the public and the exhibition was being dismantled.

It will take a team of staff almost a week of work to completely clear the gallery of the Biba exhibits and leave it a blank slate ready for the next thing. And they’re also using the opportunity to run a rolling photoshoot of some of the clothing items, for a new book.

Removing the descriptive text from the wall – I didn’t ever imagine this would to be done by hand but it’s obvious really.

An interesting point is that the fiscal value (or not) of individual exhibits doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the popularity or scale of an exhibition. So the Biba exhibition has been hugely popular – yet few of the items are of huge value because this is recent commercial fashion and design history, rather than historic fine art (though of course it could become that over time!) and particularly because of the pioneering off-the-shelf disposability of Biba. What I’m trying to say is; it’s odd to see these items that were just elevated to the status of museum exhibits, folded up and put in a box like regular clothing. I can’t really tell if the coat left folded over the edge of this box is a Biba piece, or just someone’s coat. The work is re-normalised. 

[Note from museum staff -- it's the curator's shirt!]

Chris T-T, Blogger in Residence

LGBT and Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

I’m Rob and I usually work in the Booking Office in the Royal Pavilion. At university I studied Fine Art and particularly enjoyed organising and setting up our exhibitions. I found it really interesting to see more of the behind the scenes work that goes on, as at the time I was mostly working on my own art practice. When this opportunity to work with Laura Waters on new interpretation and a trail for Brighton Museum & Art Gallery came up as part of the workforce development programme, I thought this would be a great time to broaden my knowledge of art from a more curatorial or research-based angle.

Between Laura, myself and Kelly (who also began working on the project through workforce development) we decided to theme the trail on the LGBT history of our collections then went on to select some artists or historical areas to research. Over the next couple of months we researched, photographed objects, filmed videos and typed up our text for the trail leaflet. I was not too happy that I woke up on the morning of the filming to discover I had a bad cold – so keep that in mind if you watch the videos on YouTube please!

A video screenshot of Kelly and I discussing Alexander McQueen

As a gay man myself I found researching the lives of others, especially those further back in history, really intriguing. It was fascinating to see how LGBT people lived in lots of different time periods and as part of very different societies to ours today. Originating from Nottingham, finding more out about the history of Brighton Pride and also Brighton’s gay past in general was great too.

Alexander McQueen was probably my favourite person to research though. I loved seeing all the images of his very elaborate and dramatic clothing designs as well as reading about his rather crazy catwalk shows. This part of his creative work was something I’d not known anything about until this project, and the descriptions of the theatricality, intensity and darkness to his shows make me wish I could have seen some of them in person. Glass cubes filled with moths, models in gas masks, huge shipwrecks – sounds pretty amazing to me!

As I write this our trail leaflet is being designed and printed and the videos are being prepared to go online. The trail opens at the start of May and I hope that it offers a new, alternative history of some of our collections to the visitors to the museum as well as other staff members. Kelly and I will also be working with Ellie Newland on organising the Out Late event in July, linked to both this trail and Brighton Pride. It should be a whole lot of fun and hopefully I will see you there!

Robert White

Weaving at Home

As a Kachin person, I believe that cultural heritage is one of the most valuable things we have. As a community struggling in the midst of political instability and uncertainty, culture offers a constructive tool for building Kachin identity. Even such a regular routine such as weaving clothing at home can be considered an important form of heritage and culture, which also produces various splendid textiles.

The picture below was taken by James Henry Green in north-eastern Burma in the early years of the twentieth century. In this photograph a young girl is weaving. The Kachins grow cotton and make clothes, turbans, blankets, and shoulder bags for themselves. Normally, it is Kachin women who weave. Even though it may appear to be a normal household chore, it produces beautiful and unique Kachin textile patterns.

Today, amongst other cultural products in Burma, Kachin textiles can be regarded as one of the most distinctive and popular. While Kachin clothing was only worn by Kachin people in the early 1900s, nowadays some Kachin textile designs are produced and worn by different ethnic people. For contemporary Kachin people these textiles remain a visible symbol of their cultural identity.

‘Hkahku girl weaving.’ Photograph by James Henry Green, 1926

My name is Gumring and I am a member of the Kachin ethnic community of Burma. Facing many current political challenges and uncertainties, Kachinland is located in north-eastern Burma, between India and China.

I was awarded a scholarship from the James Henry Green Charitable Trust for my postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex. Currently I am working on the James Henry Green collection of photographs and textiles relating to the Kachin community in Burma. This is my second blog about this collection, which is cared for at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.