Imperial War Museum

I remember in my 1st year of study there was a section in the Imperial war museum that contained lucky charms. The main ones being coal, a horse shoe and shamrock. For the idea that they believed and placed superstition on these objects in this time is very interesting. The way in which we as humans always place meaning on things actually in general makes you think, is everything we do to leave a legacy?

There were some very interesting things in the museum. It got me wondering on why certain object are given meaning, or are not giving meaning until prescribed with a narrative.

A really nice thing i saw was that British soldiers would collect remnants of blown up buildings as a remembrance to their contribution to the war but Belgium did not like this as it made reconstruction hard meaning they had to build other pieces to go there. I don’t understand the frustration with making everything perfectly normal again! Why cant we enjoy the world as an exhibition rather than keep it to the confines of a ‘Gallery’ or ‘Museum’ I say this because if we had left some of the building in the condition they had been left we would have had more of an attachment rather than through a photograph which can make you rather agnostic towards the whole belief of something so terrible happening.

The British soldiers bringing something back is almost like when we collect shells from the beach, or bring back a friend a piece of rock or a tacky momentum from the front shops. Why do we do this? Is it taking a piece of that place, or your particular memory of that place? We seem to like to collect memories and this is something i want to play on massively in my work.

Almost thinking like a tree. A tree see’s everything. It sits and watches the world go by forgotten in its importance and its actual value in the world of helping us to breath but also collecting our history and heritage.

I think it was time i go back to the inventors as their objects to play with the idea of objects as people to get a feel for how actually we can create design but it can gather such a different meaning for so many people.