Week 15: Quilts/V&A

Ugh. What a truly crap waste of money this weeks cultural pursuit was. I am not feeling on top form today so please forgive in advance my total disdain for the mound of wank that was the V& Quilts “exhibition”. Frankly, and this is not a sweeping generalisation I have been going to exhibs at the V&A now for over a decade, they should have their curatorial balls cut off. They are the most incompetent bunch of short sited half wits to ever grace a museum and should all be told to take a hike lugging their dusty, shoddy half realised decorative cardboard screens with them – the only thing they ever actually bother to produce - and their smug boring faces too. If you pay £10 for an exhibition you kind of expect something and this was the most underwhelming experience I’ve had, like EVER, in a gallery. £10 worth of pink paint.

Now, I admit that an exhibition of quilts was never going to awaken everyone’s interest. However, I am actually very interested in quilts. In fact I was a bit pissed off when I heard about the Quilt exhib a year ago as it was about 6 months prior to this that I had decided to make my own patchwork quilt and felt they were somewhat stealing my thunder. Ah the trials of a trail blazer such as myself. To put a bit of context around this I had at that time recently rediscovered the wander of sketching, having not laid pencil to paper since the end of my tad disastrous and much mocked (by me) Art A level. (It’s amazing what incompetent teaching will do to turn bright young inspired minds away from a particular pursuit – THANKS for that Mr Walsh maybe next time you could bother actually TEACHING people, and note to everyone else if you want to do fuck all for the rest of your life become an art teacher apparently you can get away with anything, or in this case nothing). Anyway, having rediscovered the joys of home based hobbies, something I will not go into now, I decided to turn my mind/fingers to similar crafty things and having been obsessed with a book as a child called Peaches at Midnight all about a patchwork quilt I thought why not. Then I decided it was really more of a winter pursuit and then I tried to sew on a button and reminded myself I fucking hate sewing more than most things and am shit at it and really don’t care so that was the end of that. Still stole my idea though.

Anyway, my point is I wasn’t against the idea to begin with and was actually quite looking forward to it, until I actually attended. Firstly, who in their right mind does an exhibition about quilts without even mentioning America????????? EVERYONE knows America is the king of quilts. In fact, the Wikipedia article on quilting barely even mentions Britain at all. It seems to be true that the tradition was held in Britain before the states but then when it did get going over there it was about 50000 times more interesting than any of the boring, I mean SO BORING, shit produced on this side of the pond. For example, one room of the “exhibition” was called Private Thoughts/Political Debates. This was obviously exploring how women, confined to the home BLAH BLAH BLAH were able to express their political ideas through their quilting. So, it became fashionable for companies to produce bits of fabric with prints on of famous historical scenes or contemporary scenes of battles etc and women would usually sew them into the middle of the quilt and thus the whole piece is politicised and also easy to date. Whoop-fucking woo. Actually that’s a bit unfair I didn’t know that before so, now I do. HOWEVER, in comparison to this America is SO much more interesting. For example, quilts are very much caught up in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Am feeling bit yuck so just going to quote Wiki directly here apologies:

“There are stories that certain quilts were used as signals [in the Underground Railroad] to help the slaves in their flight to freedom. The idea that a log cabin quilt would be hung on the line of a safe house was one. More recent stories tell of certain quilts being used to tell the slaves what they needed to do to get to safety.”

Well that’s pretty damn interesting and maybe would have somehow helped to liven up the revoltingly bland exhibition that this was. OR:

“During the Civil War quilts were made to earn money for the war effort and to give warmth and comfort to soldiers. The patterns were much like those made mid-century but the purpose was different. Quilts connected to the abolitionist movement and the Civil War were made for a cause […] In the north quilts were still made for fairs but now these fairs earned money to support needs that came about because of the war. In the south lovely quilts called gun boat quilts were made to pay for much needed gun boats.”

Instead what we have were a few dusty panels with something like ‘Wellington’ written in the middle. Thanks.

To be honest, I found the whole thing pretty damn depressing. We were meant, I think, to be looking on in wonder at these beautifully crafted bits of fabric but frankly all they said to me were thousands of years of confinement, repression and abject boredom. These poor fucking women had nothing better to do with their time, at all, and not only that there were seemingly the only way to express any ideas or comment on the world around them. It wasn’t until the 19th century at some point that quilting started filtering down to the lower classes, before that it was the exclusive domain of wealthy ladies as they were the only ones who had enough time and inclination to waste on these bits of pointless busy work. The rows and rows of little bits of fabric painstakingly sewed together were like cages keeping bored uneducated idol women inside, wrapping them up in their pointless lives – quilts as social cotton wool, horrid.

Maybe it would have helped if I had got an audio guide, but damn it those pricks weren’t getting anymore of my ‘hard earned’ dosh. At one point there was something of vague interested mentioned in passing:

“The government-funded Rural Industries Bureau (RIB), recognising the commercial appeal of regional quilts, promoted quilt-making as a means of binging income to households struggling to survive in a period of economic depression”.

Now, if I knew more about this I think it would be very interesting. However, the only information we are given other than this was from a 2 minute taped interview with an old women played out from an undefined point somewhere above our heads and totally drowned out by the general noise of the exhibition – in this case SCREAMING babies. I don’t mind crying babies, that’s what they do, but these unbearable women who take them to places like this and weal them around as they scream their lungs out should be lined up and shot. Not only is it basic fucking child abuse – pick them up and give them a hug you nasty bitch, but its also totally selfish to just to stand there and let them cry RUINING everyone else’s enjoyment – make them stop crying or take them out. Or give me back my ten quid you cunts. Anyway, the point is no real info was given and you couldn’t even hear the interview and instead we got to see 2 really hideous and boring examples of these types of quilts shown below. Wow, mind-blowing. ON THE INTERNET have managed to get some info on this related to Wales and the fact that by the beginning of the 20th century the tradition of quilting had almost totally died out:

“There was a resurgence between the two world wars when the Rural Industries Bureau established a programme to encourage craft industries in areas affected by economic depression. The quilts made during this time were mainly high quality quilts to sell as luxury items in wealthier areas. Sadly though, fabric production ceased during World War II, and after the war there was neither the necessity or the skills remaining to carry on the craft in any major fashion”

Throughout the exhibition they had mostly really bad contemporary pieces of quilting or art work related to quilting. Oh V&A aren’t you clever thinking of mixing in the contemporary with the traditional rather than just doing it chronologically –why don’t you give yourselves a big smug pat on the back and then I can give you a kick in the gut. Maybe if they had actually chosen some half interesting pieces this would have worked but of course, you didn’t. In fact was there even a Tracey Emin quilt in this show? I think not. Instead we got bland obvious clichéd pieces like the one by someone whose name doesn’t even come up on the internet and cant find a picture of her shitty little artwork but she SO CLEVERLY (??) thought to mirror the plight of woman at home with the idea of a quilt made up of sections of embroidery depicting household appliances or the covers of women’s magazines. This art work was produced last year. Yes, really, how original!!!!!!????????????????

There was one quite good piece by Grayson Perry with lots of foetuses spinning round obviously drawing on ideas of the quilt as safety and comfort and its natural association with the bed and yet showing the tensions behind this. Blah blah. For the most part though the contemporary stuff was embarrassingly bad.

One other piece I did quite like was by the inmates of Wandsworth Prison who have a sewing club and together made this quilt. I like the ideas this articulates about the communal, shared work of making a quilt, giving people a sense of purpose but also a way to bond with each other and communicate their feelings about prison life to the outside world.

I can’t be bothered to waste any more of my time on this pitiful waste of space – don’t bother going, and if you meet anyone who claims to like it know that they are empty stupid meaningless people who should be slapped. Get a life.