Posted in: Comics | Tagged:

Walking Inside A Graphic Novel – Visiting The Memory Palace At The V&A

Scott McCloud defines comics as sequential. juxtaposed, visual art. This is usually interpreted as comic strips, comics pages, ways of telling stories in that flat fashion.

The Memory Palace, the new exhibition at the V&A takes that interpretation and stamps on it from a height.

I went there yesterday with young children (£6 entrance, kids are free) and definitely got my money's worth.

First we have a story. Written by Hari Kunzru, in prose, poetry, diagrams, maps and comics. And interpreted by a series of artists in a semi-narrative form around the space. A satirical mix somewhere between The Chrysalids and 1984, we find a future world that looks back upon out own. A place after the financial collapse of the world following the wiping out of electronica, which is trying to reject materialism, but preserve tyranny. A population that has lost the ability to remember, a state that keeps it that way and a man trying to both regain what has been lost, and preserve it from those who govern. And explored in intimate detail.

Examples include Le Gun who has recreated a comic book character in three dimensions, the wolves  portrayed in full 3D shapes but the brush strokes delineating shading preserved – it's a rather intriguing mismatch, as they pull some horror-show interpretations of what Hospitals were – something closer to medicine men, freakshows carrying a carriage full of strange tinctures and potions with the NHS livery, all in harsh black and white design, closer to that of Charles Burns.

       Another is Erik Kessels' sculpture, a church made of bales of recycled paper, as the future has concertinaed recycling and religion into one cultural event. It dominated the room you walk into… and the kids were happy running in and running out of the columns while I read the text.

Text itself is a key element, examples of the prose filling the wall, with typographical tricks aplenty, Peter Bil'ak giving us a wall of lifted text that can only be read from one angle, the shadows of letters stretching to the floor.

And, of course, there are comics. A tale of judgment by Alexis Deacon, spatial storytelling of mental and physical torture with Luke Pearson, and a vision of a destroyed London from Némo Teal on acrylic with a UV light box illuminating the devastation from behind.

Visitors are also invited to choose the one memory that they would leave behind, in memory of their own lifetime's worth of experience, by writing and drawing on a tablet. These images and words ill then be condensed and will appear on prints circling one section of the exhibition. I added the birth of my eldest daughter. She added her last birthday but one, seeing her friends swimming upside down.

The experience is an immersive one and I wanted to know more, repeating visits to differing sections, trying to glean out more aspects of the story, and of the world. It's comparable to Dave McKean's exhibition at the Pump House in Battersea a couple of years ago, but this is more extensive in the story it tells and uses more voices.

The story itself is available to read at the show, and copies can be bought at the V&A or online. There will be a number of events concerning this exhibition over the coming months. If you're in South West London, and you'd like to see the kind of storytelling experience comics can acheive, I highly recommend it.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!