Motif Exhibition

As one of my tutors has launched an exhibition in the Bonnington Art gallery a few weeks ago, I obviously had to check it out. The exhibition is called "Motif" and is a collection of various symbols that have had big popularity since 2005 and where the historical inspirations for these symbols originally came from.

The exhibition showed all the symbols spread out on the table and had a little interactive feature to it as well. The table was split into different categories such as timeless, luxury, or kitsch and each symbol was printed as a little card to move them into the categories that visitors think it might fit into. There was also an option to share the responses on Instagram with the hashtag #motifmaps. I really liked this feature of showing your own interpretation of all the different symbols as other people might have a completely different view of what they represent.

Another element the exhibition had was the different categorisations of all the motifs. The categorisations were hero and history, shape and function, hybrid and compound image, and meaning and message.

The exhibition also had actual items which feature some of the motifs and it was quite surprising to me how popular some of these motifs are/were but never really thought about why and where it came from.

One example I quite liked is the lightning symbol which was quite iconic in the 70s as David Bowie had the lightning symbol often reoccurring and is now getting popular in interior items such as the mirror by Bride and Wolfe.

The thing that gave me the biggest wow-effect is the map of all motifs and how they are connected and influenced by one another. I think this exhibition was a really great insight into how fast trends are changing nowadays in tune with 2020 coming up and social media is dominating and influencing trends faster and faster.