Calum Storrie is an exhibition and museum designer based in London. He has been working in this field since 1986 gaining experience in private practice and at the British Museum.
He set up his own studio in 1998 and has since worked with many national collections and smaller museums.
Calum Storrie’s clients include the Courtauld Gallery, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy, and Wellcome Collection.
He is the author of The Delirious Museum; From the Louvre to Las Vegas, published by I. B. Tauris.
For the Wellcome Collection exhibition Tibet’s Secret Temple, I created a series of rooms arranged in a spiral around the central space showing murals from the Lukhang Temple in Llhasa. The thematic rooms were distinguished by vibrant colours and overlapping planes.
Forensics explored the history, science and art of forensic medicine. The exhibition included original evidence, archival material, photographic documentation, film footage, forensic instruments and specimens, and artworks.
From the initial proposal to the finished exhibition the layout of Forensics changed very little. The brief identified a number of themes that were translated into spaces with their own identities and atmospheres: ‘the Crime Scene’, ‘the Morgue’, ‘the Laboratory’, ‘the Search’ and ‘the Courtroom’. The design exploited a number of different visual effects using, for instance, a two-way mirrored wall and a long tunnel making a transition from a light room into darkness.
This small not-for-profit gallery in central London is devoted to various aspects of Russian and Soviet art and design. My work for them has involved making a number of distinctive interiors at short notice and within a limited budget. This allows for a degree of experimentation.
The design here created a semi-enclosed ‘cinema’ space that was interrupted by the grid layout of the cases. The half drum also served to create a title wall and an oblique entry into the exhibition.
This exhibition told a complex story in a relatively small space through paintings, photographs and written texts. The design responded to the importance of certain interiors in Woolf‘s life by suggesting a series of overlapping rooms. At the same time it reflected a curatorial desire to place Woolf‘s ideas and work within the context of Modernity.
Plinths for double-sided drawings, one of a number of projects for showcases and other display elements for the Courtauld Gallery.
Photograph courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery.
Museum of Innocence
A fragment of Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul that came to Somerset House in 2016. The small display referred to the Museum’s interior whilst creating a separate identity making the most of the domestic scaled spaces in which it was installed.
Graphics: Amy Preston
Photographs courtesy of Somerset House.
Interim proposal for a new wing to house the collection of ‘installation and performance art’ of the Delirious Museum, Department of Art, 2009. Download pdf.
