"The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains" at the V&A Museum in 2017

I predict one of the most popular exhibitions of 2017 will be The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains at the V&A Museum - particularly as it marks a collaboration by the remaining members of the band (see the official Pink Floyd website)

The exhibition will celebrate Pink Floyd’s place in history as the cultural landscape changed throughout the 1960s and beyond. 

Today the Victoria and Albert Museum announced that tickets went on sale at 10am today for this major retrospective despite the fact that the exhibition does not open until May next year! Dates for the exhibition are 13th May - 1 October 2017 (13 weeks).
I think they're anticipating a lot of visitors - and an awful lot of bookings!

The cover of Ummagumma
©Pink Floyd Music Ltd

To mark 50 years since the band released their first single Arnold Layne, and over 200 million record sales later, The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains will be an immersive, multi-sensory and theatrical journey through Pink Floyd’s extraordinary world. A story of sound, design and performance, the exhibition will chronicle the music, iconic visuals and staging of the band, from the underground psychedelic scene in 1960s London to the present day, illustrating their groundbreaking use of special effects, sonic experimentation, powerful imagery and social commentary.

Pink Floyd will forever be the musical back story (along with Tubular Bells!)) to my time as a student at Cambridge!  Not least because my boyfriend at the time was a huge fan and the band released some of their most iconic albums (The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973), Wish You Were Here in 1975) during my time there.

The fact that my final year digs were also in a don's house in Rock Road opposite the home of Roger Waters's mother provided an added connection! (For those with a penchant for visiting places associated with artists - or bands - the Cambridge Evening News does a very nice list of various places in Cambridge associated with different members of the band!)

Original members of Pink Floyd
from left to right: Roger Waters, Sid Barrett, Rick Wright and Nick Mason

The reason for highlighting the exhibition on this blog is that the exhibition will focus on iconic images, design and photography associated with band as well as the band’s era-defining work in composition, staging, film and music technology,

Pink Floyd have produced some of the most iconic imagery in popular culture: from pigs flying over Battersea Power Station, The Dark Side of the Moon prism, cows, marching hammers to giant inflatable teachers; their vision brought to life by creative individuals such as modern surrealist and long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson, satirical illustrator Gerald Scarfe and psychedelic lighting pioneer Peter Wynne Wilson.

It will feature more than 350 objects and artefacts and will include

• spectacular set and construction pieces from some of Pink Floyd’s most innovative and legendary album covers and stage performances including 
• The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
• The Wall (1979) and 
• The Division Bell (1994)
• instruments, music technology, 
• original designs, architectural drawings, handwritten lyrics and psychedelic prints and posters. 

Visitors to the exhibition will also have the unique opportunity to experience never-before-seen classic Pink Floyd concert footage and a custom designed laser light show - hence why it's getting rock concert treatment by the V&A booking office!

The Director of the V&A commented

“The V&A is perfectly placed to exhibit the work of a band that is as recognisable for its unique visual imagery as for its music. Pink Floyd is an impressive and enduring British design story of creative success. Alongside creating extraordinary music, they have for over five decades been pioneers in uniting sound and vision, from their earliest 1960s performances with experimental light shows, through their spectacular stadium rock shows, to their consistently iconic album covers. The exhibition will locate them within the history of performance, design and musical production by presenting and complementing the material from Pink Floyd’s own archive with the V&A’s unrivalled collections in architecture, design, graphics and literature.”

The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains opens on 13 May 2017 for 20 weeks. Tickets are available now. Entry will be timed. Tickets cost £20 – £24 (and will vary between weekday and weekend) but entry is free for V&A Members.

Note:

1. The exhibition is curated by the V&A by a team led by Victoria Broackes alongside Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell of Hipgnosis, the Creative Director of Pink Floyd, and Paula Stainton. The curatorial team have worked closely with members of the group on the content of the exhibition, which is being designed by Stufish, the world leading entertainment architects and longtime stage designers for Pink Floyd.
2. About Hipgnosis: In 1967 Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell and Storm Thorgerson were approached by their friends in Pink Floyd to design the cover for the group’s second album, A Saucerful of Secrets. This led to a flurry of work from other bands including Free and Tyrannosaurus Rex. The name Hipgnosis was born out of a chance encounter with a door frame. Powell and Thorgerson had been looking for a name for their fledgling studio. At the time they shared a flat with Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and by chance Syd had scrawled in ball-point pen the word HIPGNOSIS on the door. Over the next fifteen years Hipgnosis gained international prominence. Their famed 1973 cover design for Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon paved the way for other major rock bands to set foot in the surreal photo-design world of Po and Storm, resulting in many artworks for Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Black Sabbath and more.
3. The exhibition is also supported by Iconic Entertainment Studios, led by Michael Cohl and The audio specialist Sennheiser