“Consumption” – a great Victoria and Albert exhibition until the 14th of June
“We are all consumers. We have invented new forms of building, industrial production, farming and energy […]. We have at times sustained our appetites through the exploitation of the world’s poorest people. […] Never has so much food been offered to us from so many parts of the world, and in such elaborate combinations. The average supermarket carries over 45,000 different product lines, and yet their provenance is frequently opaque. We no longer know how or where our food was made, reared, killed, prepared and packaged or how many thousands of miles it has travelled. And then, when it finally arrives in our homes, almost half of what we buy is thrown away.” – this is how the photo exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum begins, and it’s a pleasure to go through!
I particularly liked the huge prints of Hong Hao’s photos (the one in the thumb nail). He’s been putting the objects he consumed day by day into a scanner for 12 years: “my daily habit as well as a tool to observe the human condition in contemporary consumer society”.
There are also Allan Sekula’s photographs on the maritime trade all over the world, and Mischa Henner’s huge prints of lanscapes shaped by the meat and the oil industries in North America.
It’s a great one, do check it out!
Maria
One response to ““Consumption” – a great Victoria and Albert exhibition until the 14th of June”
Thank you for bringing this show to our attention, Maria. It sound very appropriate for OiM indeed and I will definitely try to go before it closes, especially since they have work by Sekula, whose film we saw in week 1, and Hong Hao, whose work I have also used as one of the tumbnails for the OiM readings.
Inge