JUST WHAT WAS IT THAT MADE YESTERDAY’S HOME SO DIFFERENT, SO APPEALING?

…is an installation of mainly household electrical products from the 1950s to the 1970s that celebrates the optimism of the postwar years as represented by industrial design at its most colourful in the styling of plastic products for mass consumption.

The installation borrows its title from Richard Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today’s home so different, so appealing? which was shown in the exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. From this seminal work, measuring only 25x26cm, Hamilton is considered to be the artist credited for the first work to be labelled Pop Art. Riffing on Hamilton’s themes of advertisements, assemblage picture-making and popular culture, the installation also alludes to his later series of collages through the creation of 3-D interior spaces that tells stories around contemporaneous cultural high-points such as film, music, interior design and the golden age of advertising.

Private view: 9th May 6 – 9pm
Exhibition running: 10 – 21st May
Opening times: 1-6pm (other times at request)

Household electrical products, more than any other mass produced products, have always been designed and destined to be disposable through upgrade or their replacement by the latest model. However, this collection, elevated to culturally significant artefacts, is an invitation for us to reconsider what is deemed collectable and how this would automatically create a plastic waste management strategy through prolonged non-functional use of these products. All the ‘vintage’ products and ephemera exhibited are from various collections of Huren Marsh an installation artist who originally trained as a furniture and product designer.

Huren Marsh has a degree in furniture and product design and combined practise in interior architecture & design as well as teaching the subject for over thirty years. He has a chair in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Design 1900 – Now gallery.