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CHRONICLE OF THE PINK FLOYD EXHIBITION THEIR MORTAL REMAINS

 

 

May 15 and 16, 2017 - Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) - London

Article written and written by Juan de Dios Valdés and José Abellán

CRONICA

 

 
15 y 16 mayo 2017 - Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) - Londres

Artículo redactado y escrito por Juan de Dios Valdés y José Abellán

Foto Ruta Floyd

 

 

On May 15 and 16, we were at said exhibition and we are not going to recount, step by step, all the content of said exhibition, but we are going to make a quick and focused summary for those who plan to visit it or for those who If you still have doubts about going, clear those doubts.

These days we had the opportunity to carry out two interviews that we had arranged, the first with the painter Duggie Fields, Syd Barrett's roommate in his time at Earls Court, where the photos were taken for his first solo album, The Madcap Laughs and author of a large painting exhibited in the exhibition recreating an image of Syd Barrett leaning against a car in the aforementioned photo session.

Foto Ruta Floyd
Foto Ruta Floyd

 

 

And the second with Aubrey Powell, the curator of the exhibition and creative director of Pink Floyd, as well as a partner with the late Storm Thorgerson of Hipnosis, the company that has made most of the album covers Pink Floyd and other artists.

From these interviews we will offer a more extensive article later.

Foto Ruta Floyd

The Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains exhibition is the second retrospective on the history of Pink Floyd to be held in this new century.

 

The first took place in Paris between 2003 and 2004 and was organized and prepared by the late Storm Thorgerson.

This second retrospective is the first to cover, on a multi-sensory journey, these fifty years of history of one of the most important bands of all time. An exhibition that opened on Saturday May 13 at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London and will be open until Sunday October 1.

The exhibition marks the fiftieth anniversary of the group's first album, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" (August 1967) and is a review of their entire career, from this first album to their latest work "The Endless River" (2014 ).

 

Pink Floyd is already a cultural icon of the 20th century.

Visiting this part of  the history of Pink Floyd, is a highly recommended option for this summer. There are only tickets left for the months of August and September according to sources from the exhibition.

Foto Ruta Floyd

With a cost of one million euros, has more than three hundred and fifty objects spread over three hundred linear meters that take us on a journey through the history of the band from its beginnings in Cambridge in 1965 to the album "The Enddles River" including their final 2005 meeting at Live 8.

Through album covers, song lyrics, videos, newspaper clippings, pieces of music, works of art, instruments, photos, inflatables, movies, clothing and many other surprises -some of which were unknown to date- we shows one of the biggest compilations of the band made to date.

A recreation of the van that the British group used for their first concerts begins the exhibition, in which, throughout more than a dozen rooms, music and a psychedelic atmosphere play a fundamental role in reproducing the universe of music. band. A handwritten letter from Syd Barrett to his girlfriend at the time, Jenny Spiers tells us the story of this van that is used as a promotional item for last year's “The Early Years” box.

Foto Ruta Floyd

In this exhibition projected with a similarity to the visual work of the compilation "Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd" of zigzagging squares, he shows us each era and each album or most significant fact. We also have objects that are shown to us above our heads or above our feet.

 

Thus, you have to go slowly and look down or up from time to time so as not to miss the innumerable surprises that adorn this exhibition.

Foto Ruta Floyd

The Sennheiser brand of headphones brings a kind of walkman with headphones where music is playing to the space we are visiting. You have to be careful not to go from one environment to another since the music then changes.

Foto Ruta Floyd

Stellar moments such as the section to the album and tour of “Animals”, “Wish you Were Here” or the tour of “The Wall” - with the teacher of Waters' tour during 2010 and 2013 -_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_ are some of the great moments of the exhibition.

Foto Ruta Floyd

The grand finale is amazing in a room with a 17.2 surround sound system, the final point of this exhibition that you can very well be visiting all day if you ride it calmly.

 

The five best moments of the exhibition

1.One of the surprises of this exhibition is to find in the hall of the museum, to the left as you enter and right in front of the information desk, the large semi-hexagonal mixing desk EMI TG 12345 MK IV, the largest ever built, as it says. in the information and that it recently sold for almost  one and a half million pounds at auction whose new owner has had the good taste to assign it temporarily for this exhibition. A mixer used on many great albums of the 1970s including the record that changed rock, "The Dark Side of The Moon". It was used by Alan Parsons for the original mixes of the album and recently Alan was at the show talking about it.

Obviously, we cannot play it to emulate Alan Parsons or the Floyds, but within the exhibition, and within the section of the album "The Dark Side of The Moon", we will find a couple of small mixing consoles, which one can throw a good time doing their mixes on songs from the album…

Foto Ruta Floyd

2. Another of the great moments is finding the cover of "Ummagumma" in a large size and surrounded by mirrors, giving the visitor the same phenomenon that Storm and Powell wanted to achieve with this cover with a painting within another painting and so on to infinity. You can immortalize that feeling of infinity with your camera and you will see an amazing result.

Foto Ruta Floyd

3.Throughout the exhibition, there are small monitors where videos are viewed, many of them known and others not after a new restoration process, and it is from the "Dark Side" album, where we see that in all the videos up to "The Wall" , are new interviews recently conducted with David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and many people involved in those albums.

You have to be very attentive to these videos, because at certain times, both Gilmour and Waters come up with musical surprises...

Foto Ruta Floyd

4.Although all the sections are very good, I highlight the name of this fanzine, the section to the album "Animals". Almost all the photographic work done for the cover is present here, as is that video of the helicopter flying over the factory while the little pig "Algie" was released. And speaking of animals, there's also a rickety inflatable sheep that was thrown from a plane at a concert on the album's tour in America.

Foto Ruta Floyd

5.This last point has more to do with the emotions and feelings that have surely surfaced in the thousands of visitors who have passed through this exhibition.

 

Moments of surprise due to the amount of news and surprises, of mixed emotions with a lump in your throat and a tsunami of tears about to destroy your integrity, seize you in certain areas of the expo above all, and personally, in the zone of the album “Wish You Were Here” (wish you were here)……and another moment of final motion, being almost inside that magical and final moment of Live 8 with the four Floyds performing “Comfortably Numb” for the last time in 2005 .

Foto Ruta Floyd

For more information about the exhibition and tickets, go toSpecial The Pink Floyd Exhibition Their Mortal Remains

 

 

THANKS:

Kathryn Havelock (V&A)

Doug Wright (LD Communications)

Aubrey Powell (Hypgnosis)

Louis Thumb

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