Work

Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 to 1990, co-curated with Jane Pavitt with the assistance of Oliver Winchester, opened at the V&A in 2011 and subsequently toured to MART in Rovereto and the Swiss National Museum, Zurich. The exhibition traced the intellectual and stylistic progression of postmodern art and design, from its initial radicalism to its eventual commodification. The show was accompanied by a major catalogue with 40 commissioned essays, and a synthetic curatorial overview.  The exhibition design, by Carmody Groarke and A Practice For Everyday Life, drew on period motifs while presenting a contemporary setting within the V&A’s Victorian architecture. 

A monographic study of a Milwaukee-based designer, Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World was on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2003. Staged in the museum’s newly opened wing, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, the show included several vehicles, among them the Skytop Lounge observation train car from the streamlined 1947 Hiawatha, and a period Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

The perfect repair would be an invisible one. The hope is to completely restore a broken object to its original function and appearance. But no repair is perfect. It’s not possible to turn back the clock, and no matter how skilled the restoration, it will be detectable - at least to expert eyes. This means that, aesthetically speaking, fixing works against itself. It involves a process of self-erasure; the more skilled the repair, the less visible it will be.

Beazley Designs of the Year is an annual project at the Design Museum, London. The show is composed of about 65 international projects proposed by invited nominators (academics, critics and designers) that cover six areas of design - architecture, product, graphics, fashion, digital and transport design.