On Wednesday, I went to the Cutty Sark on my own as further exploration of the boat that I fell in love with at the V&A (the nef with the hidden lizards). Though this ship was of an entirely different scale and a different era, I was excited to explore and navigate the compartments to see if there was any actual substantial history of lizards on British Ships.

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I was drawn to these carved figureheads because they reminded me of the Dacre Beasts and the puppet caricatures at the V&A that I had seen before. However, their use was something entirely different. They were used as a symbol for the spirit of a ship. The figure itself was relatively anonymous, to be imbued with meaning.

Throughout the ship itself, there were all sorts of wonderful objects that were created to accommodate people, who were wildly out of context at sea.

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Because space was tight, each object had to absolutely justify its reason for being there, apart from a few whimsical items to try to preserve a sentiment of life on solid ground. I particularly enjoyed the image of chickens and pigs wandering the decks–evidently they were kept in order to bulk up the men’s diets while at sea.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything about lizards, though.

On Tuesday, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to gather objects that inspired us.

I had never been the V&A before, but I had heard from multiple people that it was an incredible museum. The first time a person goes to a museum is such a precious experience. There is so much wonder in the way that the space transforms and the physical juxtaposition of these micro worlds as you turn a corner. That level of gross amazement can only happen once, but then, comes the surprise from the details.

Unfortunately, the day that we visited, the rapid response room, which is where the communications students were meant to go, was closed, so we ended up just skipping to getting lost in the museum.

What a wonderful place it was to get lost in, and my experience was a little bit of that of the museum, a collage of wonderful things that I allowed myself to be drawn to for no particular reason.

This is a musical instrument incased in a sculpture of a tiger attacking a soldier from the East India Company in response to Britain’s colonial occupation of present day India. It is just a wonderful, strange object. However, it’s presumed point of view and audience sit a bit strangely in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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I was drawn to this necklace because it had proportions that were a bit strange. To me, it looked like a piece of jewelry that would be drawn on a Disney Princess, or something of the like. Too, the images that are set in the necklace had a bit of this characteristic nature, even though they are quite realistic depictions of shells.

Too the necklace has an interesting history as it probably belonged to a Queen of Naples, so it has a trace of the personality of the person who would have worn it–like some sort of sea queen. I love the way that the brain tries to fill in the person on which the jewelry would rest.

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Around the corner from the necklace, there is an impressive displace of European gold and silver. Normally, I am quite bored with this section of museums. However, there was a small, golden ship which caught my eye. I was drawn to it for similar reasons as to the necklace. The proportions were a little off–it looked almost like what a toy ship with plastic sails would look like today, with exaggerated details and figurines that were just a bit too big to be realistic. It was much more concerned with narrative than with accuracy. I would have passed it up had I not read the description, however.

According to the description, the hull can be lifted up to reveal a lizard, which is an amazing surprise that we as viewers do not get to see. I thought this was absolutely delightful–particularly if the ship did indeed date back to medieval France, as lizards seem to be a bit out of place with the reverent nature of the piece itself as a display piece or an impressive vessel. I enjoyed this playful juxtaposition.

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I started to notice a pattern in the things that I was drawn to–objects that seemed to have a life to them that were strangely out of place in their tone, or perhaps to their tone prescribed by me. I found these statues, which I suppose are objects, to be absolutely marvelous. At first, I found them to be horrible, but then I found them quite funny. I loved the expressions on their faces, particularly, of the sheep and the fish. To me, they just looked like they hated their jobs. They had been plucked out of their ‘normal’ environments and cast in these wooden forms as frozen caricatures of their original forms and put up to guard Naworth Castle in Cumbria. Then, the same thing had happened with their removal from their location to be placed to act as an intermediate between rooms at the V&A.

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In addition to these caricatures of the beasts, I found myself drawn to these object caricatures of other forms, particularly recognizable people in Britain. I loved the color and the apparent humor of exaggeration.

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I was also drawn to the the creation of space and props as created by these set mockups in the theater section of the museum. I had a sort of theater mock-up in mind when creating my last installation for Navigators with the hanging blind contours of Borough Market and Trafalgar Square.

Interestingly, next to this exhibition, there were certain theatrical pieces from my own home, New Orleans, Louisiana, which were situated in a hall of tapestries.

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These costumes are very familiar to me as something that is seen in Louisiana for each carnival season, but they are a tradition of a very specific population in Louisiana, which is passed down in families. I am not a part of the population that engage in creating and wearing these costumes, which are largely mobile multi-paneled narrative illustrations laden with symbolism of the wearer’s personal history. However, it still gave me an intense sense of pride to have a part of my culture celebrated in this museum, which is perhaps and interesting modern recontextualization of the museum, as opposed to the stolen history of many of the other objects.

There were also many other objects that I loved:

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Overall, the museum was wonderful and astounding, and now, the task is whittling down all of this material.