Documents

From the accompanying exhibition brochure

Historically the part played by the State in this country in relation to the practice of the arts has not been very great. But the time comes when particular functions or activities become of such obvious and urgent significance that high places can no longer pass them by. Finally the State takes a hand and endeavours to stimulate them with a more centralising or directive emphasis. That is why the Council exists.

Sir Thomas Barlow, Chairman of the Council of Industrial Design, March 1945.

In October 1999, to initiate the second in its series of In-Site projects, PhotoWorks invited artists Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings to undertake a residency in the Design Council Archive at the University of Brighton. Documents is the culmination of that residency, the ambitious conclusion of a year-long period of research and dialogue with the Archive and its staff. Comprising an exhibition, a publication, a web-browser and conference. Documents takes the form of a series of related encounters with the Archive unfolding throughout December 2000.

The Design Council Archive is a unique and, as yet, little known collection devoted to the extensive activities of the Design Council from 1944 to 1994. Reflecting the far-reaching impact of state-endorsed product design on the cultural history of post-war Britain, it is a highly appropriate context for Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings. Both as individual artists and when working together, as they have since 1995, their work is concerned with ‘material culture’, with an ‘articulation and understanding of how objects shape our relationship to the world and to ourselves’. Much of their previous collaborative work has been made in response to collections and has interrogated the mechanisms by which very different cultural institutions similarly accumulate, classify and display objects and artefacts.

Comprising a wide range of materials, posters, films and objects, the Design Council Archive is dominated by one of the largest photographic collections of industrial design in the world. Its 100,000 prints and 60,000 negatives provide an invaluable insight into the expanding world of manufactured goods during this period, with subjects ranging from post-war furniture and domestic appliances, to ceramics, textiles, transport, street furniture, packaging and much more. For PhotoWorks this photographic collection was the initial context for this project and, for Marysia and Neil, too, it provided a point of entry into the diverse materials stored by the Archive. Importantly for them, as well as forming a comprehensive record of manufactured products, the photographic collection also graphically demonstrates the various promotional strategies of the Design Council as it sort to define and control an emerging consumer culture and an uncertain public taste following World War II.

Marysia and Neil’s work thrives in a context where an open exchange of ideas is matched by a spirit of enquiry. In the Archive they have found such a context and this is reflected in the breadth and multi-faceted nature of their final work. While Documents embodies a critical response to the Archive as a representation of institutional control, it also suggests the artists’ fascination with the design and utility of objects and the continually shifting values we ascribe to them. Their work is, in this sense, both rigorous and playfully inventive as it re-articulates the Archive’s data and re-considers the Design Council’s attempts to shape the visual and material culture of post-war Britain. Connected through the Archive to this crucial moment of formation, the Documents project also reflects on the Council’s waning influence now, adrift in the boundless spaces of early twenty first century consumerism.

David Chandler, Director, PhotoWorks

The support of invaluable support of Catherine Moriarty, Curator, Design Council Archive, Professor Jonathan Woodham, Director of the Design History Research Centre.

Adrift

In recent years we have developed a number of projects with museum collections, retail stores, galleries and art academies, all of which play a central role in structuring economies of value and exchange, between people and things. In these projects we have evolved a way of working which requires a detailed and prolonged period of research with the host institution. Rather than conceiving an artwork which is taken to a designated space of display – conventionally the gallery – we are interested in developing a range of practices relevant to the context of a particular project. The prospect of working with an archive devoted to the post-war history of design, manufacturing, and consumer goods, connected with, and provided the opportunity to extend our interest in material culture.

An archive – unlike a museum – has no imperative to interpret or exhibit its holdings. The vast photographic collection at the heart of the Design Council Archive, is accompanied by the attendant information shadows of objects – press articles, films, advertising, teaching materials, minutes of the Council’s meetings, annual reports, government correspondence and memoranda, leaflets and ephemera – stored as evidence. The collection waits mute in rigorously controlled environments, awaiting scholarly interpretation. Browsing through the archive, the details of a powerful economy emerge – one barely imaginable today – the traces of a centralised government project to educate the taste of its citizens, in the consumption of material things. Records bare witness to the State initially stimulating, then reacting against, and eventually becoming subsumed by, a culture of consumption; perhaps echoing government participation elsewhere.

To take up a residence is to establish a relationship, becoming a guest and gradually getting to know the host. Occupying an unfamiliar space over time is refreshing, there is a pleasure connected to the systematic effort of searching, navigating and at times, aimlessly drifting. Slowly, as the recognition of what forces shaped the material emerges, so does the need for giving shape to one’s own response. Fortunately, the archive is also a space of conversation, staffed by curators whose task lies not only in ordering and protecting the collection, but who themselves are committed to an ongoing enquiry over its meanings. Our conversations have often revealed the blind spots and quiet documents hidden by the vast catalogued bulk of the photographic collection. These gaps reflect the limitations of every system, exposing weaknesses in collecting and classifying as an inadequate representation of wider material practices. Could one conceive a different kind of order, in which certain images or documents could be brought back from the sleep of the archive, and animated into exchange?

While we were encouraged to open every folder, file, box and album – a different kind of storage space was emerging. The archive is in the process of going on-line, allowing its images and information to fuse with the infinite digital data, threaded together as the World Wide Web. The process of electronic transfer holds the promise of endless availability as the archive connects – with everything else in a digital form. Crawlers, Portals and Search Engines are the new archivists, software that helps curate data into comprehension.

to buy the book: Cornerhouse

Find out more at the Documents Web Site Featuring the Stock List Browser