OMA / Progress - Exhibition @ The Barbican; 9 Nov

I went to see OMA Progess at the Barbican.

http://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2011/10/Progress-at-the-Barbican_26.jpg

OMA, (or the Office for Metropolitan Architecture) for those who don't know, are one of the biggest architectural practices of the present day, headed by the hugely influential and well known Rem Koolhaas, who founded OMA back in 1975 with three others; Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. This exhibition was put together by another practice, Rotor, who were given unparalleled access to the studios and materials of OMA. This gives the exhibition the interesting perspective of the practice as a company, with all its banal everyday workings of being an office, while at the same time managing to portray the extraordinary work undertaken there; for example there is a room with a A1 colour printer standing in it, with a drawing draped over it as if it has just been printed, and then there are the photos of joke emails that were sent round the office, a picture of a guy asleep at his desk, and the 'secret room', a box covered on 5 sides, ceiling included, with the contents of the wastepaper baskets of OMA.

Then there is the presentation of the work itself. There are of course many amazing models, and their work has been categorized under different room titles; i think there is one on materials, for example; so that you wander around the main space, perhaps encountering the same project in many different ways in different rooms, only partial aspects being considered as they explore the given 'theme'.
I haven't yet mentioned the entrance to the exhibition, which itself begins to explore the way OMA work. Finding yourself in a colourful winding passage with lifesize people cut-outs makes you feel like you are part of one of their presentations; one of those populated visions that OMA do so well, showing how a building might be used. Its kind of surreal.

As i said, it is charming to see all the strange and quirky things be presented by another practice; the first thing you see upon entering the exhibition proper, is a couple of lumps of clay on a podium; the people who put together this exhibition don't know what they are any more than we do; they present them as found in OMA offices, declaring that it could just be leftover clay, or it may have been some kind of exploratory model or experiment. You just don't know.

OMA's Website
Rotor - OMA / Progress Exhibition  - lots of photos of the exhibition.

Degas Exhibition: Picturing Movement - Royal Academy of Arts, London

On Friday i went with a group to see the 'Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement' Exhibition currently on at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Not previously knowing much about the work of Degas apart from his association with the Impressionist movement, i was introduced to a world of study on the subjects of movement and dance; a subject that Edgar Degas was fascinated with to the point of it being a continual preoccupation to try and capture within his work a sense of the dynamic; the moving image.

It is to this purpose that the exhibition focuses not only on Degas, but features work by the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, and work by Etienne-Jules Marey, including sculptures of a bird's successive movements in flight, and many photographs, and examples of photography equipment or ways of capturing an object in 3D by taking a series of studies at different angles, by photograph or drawing studies; something that Degas used as preparation for his sculpture, 'The Little Dancer'.

Not only photographs by others; this exhibition also presents Degas the photographer, showing just how enthusiastic and exciting he must have found this and other new mediums such as film. The exhibition shows amateur photographs taken by Degas of himself and his friends, in places such as his own house. A fascinating portrayal of a pioneering point in time, with the emergence of all these new technologies, and the clear inspiration they had.