"Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace" at the V&A

Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)
Sep 6, 2013 3:23PM

18 June - 20 October 2013

If you could keep only one memory, what would it be? This summer the V&A presents a dramatic vision of the future through an immersive exhibition experience. Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace is a walk-in story that brings to life a new work of fiction by the author Hari Kunzru. This narrative world is visualised through a series of commissions by 20 internationally acclaimed illustrators, graphic designers and typographers to create a multidimensional story.

Kunzru’s story is written in a series of short passages that move in a non-linear way through the dystopian world he created. Each of the designers and illustrators worked on a different passage of text from the story, responding freely to the text. The resulting commissions vary dramatically in scale and format, from intricate hand-drawn works to large three-dimensional environments.

Find out more about the exhibition and events programme: www.vam.ac.uk/whatson

Take the exhibition home

In order to experiment with the relationship between the written word and its visual interpretation, it was necessary to commission a new story rather than attempt to adapt an existing text. The original brief to Kunzru was purposefully very open, only setting out that multiple practitioners would be commissioned to interpret it.’ explain Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar, curators of the exhibition, the process behind the original fiction Memory Palace by Hari Kunzru which is the starting point for the exhibition. The 112-page book includes specially commissioned artwork by 20 leading typographers, illustrators and graphic designers, a graphic story by Robert Hunter and a contextual essay by the exhibition curators Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar. 

The book will be available in hardback at the museum store and online at www.vandashop.com.

Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)