Recent Exhibitions
Royal Academy
Burlington Gardens, London
Earth: Art of a Changing World
December 2009 – January 2010
This exhibition presented the work of 35 artists in the context of the debate around climate change.
Earth was organised by the Royal Academy of Arts
in collaboration with 
Cape Farewell.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Bullet Creative Ltd
- Photographs: Francis Ware
Images, top to bottom:
Spencer Finch, Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson, Amherst MA, August 28, 2004), 2004 over the staircase of Burlington House.
Mona Hatoum, Hotspot, 2006 with Anthony Gormley’s Amazonian Field, 1992 emerging from the doorway.
Kris Martin, 100 Years, 2004 with work by Darren Almond and Tacita Dean in the background.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire
The Artist’s Studio
September-December 2009
The Artist’s Studio was situated in the temporary exhibition spaces on the first floor of Compton Verney encompassing both galleries in the old house and in the new purpose-built exhibition gallery. The latter space had at its centre an ‘unfinished’ room-within-a-room in which documentary photographs of contemporary studios were shown.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Tim Harvey
- Photographs: Jamie Woodley ©Compton Verney
From the Compton Verney press release:
The first exhibition to allow UK audiences a fascinating insight into the world of the artist’s studio opens at Compton Verney on 26 September. While concentrating on Britain, the exhibition also refers to Renaissance Italy, seventeenth century Holland and nineteenth century France, where the development of images of the studio exerted a strong influence on Britain......
University College London
Disposal?
October 2009
This exhibition invited you ‘to comment on the most challenging question faced by museums today: What should we collect and hold on to and what should we get rid of?’.
The exhibition took place in an empty engineering lab at UCL and ran for just two weeks. The design reflected both the temporary nature of the show and the atmosphere of the laboratory in which it was sited.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Lucienne Roberts
- Photographs: Richard Hubert Smith
Related:
Agatha Christie's picnic basket?
Guardian article
Wellcome Collection, London
Madness and Modernity:
Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900
2009
Madness and Modernity is an exhibtion looking at the relationship between art and mental health in fin-de-siecle Vienna.
The layout is structured around a series of doorways that refer to particular places and architecture in the city. The doorways appear solid from the entrance side but are exposed as stage sets to the back. Other elements of the build also have a half-built or unfinished character.
The exhibits cover a wide range of material from models and furniture through artworks to film.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Lucienne Roberts +
- Photographs: David Shaw
. . .an enthralling and beautifully mounted exhibition . . .
Lisa Appignanesi, New Statesman, 16 April 2009
Related:
Madness & Modernity leaflet with drawings by Calum Storrie.
Download pdf
Royal Academy of Arts
Byzantium 330-1453
2008
This major exhibition was held in the main galleries of the Royal Academy.
The design was based around a number of architectural fragments that referred to Byzantine architecture without becoming pastiche. A large proportion of the exhibits were shown in bespoke glass showcases with built-in lighting and environmental conditioning.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Tim Harvey
I had underestimated the ability of the Royal Academy’s designers to construct a sumptuous journey through this sometimes stern but always glorious religious bling. Set mostly in twilight, the show does a decent job of implying the solemn religious atmospheres for which most of this art was made. But the melodrama is smartly rationed.
—Waldemar Januszczak, The Sunday Times, October 26, 2008
This exhibition must be one of the most beautiful that the RA has ever staged …Each gallery has been painted a different colour and the palette has been carefully chosen to create a sumptuous backdrop to the artefacts – rich burgundy, imperial purple, deep terracotta.
—Jane Weeks, Museums Journal, February 2009
Related:
British Library
From East to West:
Traditional East Asian and Contemporary European Printing
2008
This exhibition of Chinese, Korean and Japanese books was held in the entrance hall of the British Library.
The simple layout and bold colour gave the exhibition a coherent identity in a space with complex through routes. Deep walls provided shelter for delicate and sensitive works on paper and gave the display a robust architectural character in marked counterpoint to its surroundings.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Lucienne Roberts +
- Photograph: John Cairns
Related:
House of Fairy Tales
thefoldingdrawinghouse
A portable drawing room made for the children’s organisation House of Fairy Tales in 2008.
The hinged panels can be configured in a number of ways depending on location. After each use the room’s drawings are recorded and the surfaces are re-painted.
- Design: Calum Storrie
Related:
Wellcome Collection
Skeletons: London’s Buried Bones
2008
This display consisted of 26 skeletons in the collections of the Museum of London and discovered at sites across London.
The skeletons were shown in individual cases laid out in a grid. Each case had an inset label detailing the facts that could be gleaned from the evidence of the bones.
- Exhibition design: Calum Storrie
- Graphic design: Jon Hares and Laurent Benner
- Photographs: Wellcome Collection
...this extraordinary, powerfully personal and historically valuable show at the Wellcome Collection is by some distance the most interesting and best presented exhibition currently on in London.
Twenty-six skeletons (borrowed from the Museum of London’s vast collection) have been laid out in what amounts to open coffins, illustrated by plaques explaining what the skeleton can tell you about the life of the deceased. It’s an excellent way of looking at the hardships ordinary Londoners have suffered over the years, with the bones given real pathos by sombre presentation and careful descriptions. Some of the younger skeletons especially are profoundly moving – a youthful skull scarred by syphilis and the shards of bone left by a 22-week foetus. Colour comes from large pictures of the contemporary locations of these lost burial grounds but this is a suitably minimalist treatment of a complex subject, and a lesson in how to get the most meaning out of limited but powerful artefacts.
Peter Watts, Time Out, 4 August 2008
Related:
