VICTORIAN GIANTS

  ‘Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography’ was a major exhibition that was the first to examine the relationship between four ground-breaking Victorian artists, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Clementina Hawarden and Oscar Rejlander. The exhibition featured photographs from public and private collections from across the world. Working with an external Curator I led and created a contemporary design for the exhibition to showcase the ground-breaking works. Using white paint for the majority of the exhibition helped to create a clean, fresh space to offset the aging of the photographs. In order to break the spaces I used a rich, deep teal to create accents and feature walls. This was complemented by my custom wallpaper design based on a design featured in one the photographs and colour-matched to the teal paint. The showcases and vitrines were lined with museum graded, Oddy Tested, ochre velvet. The graphics were similarly contemporary. Using a clear typeface with white vinyl for the introduction and panels. The captions were hand-painted to match the wall colours and then printed, using direct to media printing, with text and images. This allowed the captions not to be too obtrusive and still meet access requirements for visitors. Working with the V&A, who had lent a range of backlit negatives, I was able to design a solution to meet their security and display needs by designing a wall with internal LED lighting that could be removed if necessary and was activated by a ten second timer so that the works wouldn’t be overexposed during the run of the exhibition.