Exhibition: Victorians Rediscovered (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum) Saturday 3rd March 2012

On Saturday (3rd March, 2012) I went to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.  Again.  As I’ve said before, I love it there and if I could, I’d probably live there.  I’d seen leaflets about the exhibition ages ago, but (being ages ago) I forgot about them and did that, “Oh, March is aaaaaaages away.  I don’t need to worry about this now.  I can do that later.”  Well, later came and I totally forgot about it until the Friday before.  Only then did I realise I’d forgotten to buy tickets for the Victorians After Dark event on the Saturday evening.  So, I got up extra early on the Saturday intending to snaffle a last-minute ticket, only to discover that said tickets had already sold out. Damn.  Oh well, at least there was the days events to go to and they were free.  Free is good.  I was particularly looking forward to Thomas Truax.  I’d never heard of him before but he was a musician who made his own instruments (combining the very Victorian ideas of inventing, science and entertainment) and he sounded worth checking out.  I wasn’t so keen on the Rogue Taxidermy though.  It sounded a bit… weird!  That was until I saw it.  I took a few snaps from the exhibition…

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THOMAS TRUAX:

Thomas Truax

This dude was amazing!  He went down very well indeed, especially with the little ones. There was a small group of children dancing throughout his entire performance.  It was very cute!  In the second and third photos, he’s playing a Hornicator.  I have no idea what it actually is but it was pretty cool.  He only had a couple of shows in Scotland.  There was one in Aberdeen a few days after this one and if I had the time and the money for it I would totally have made the ridiculous journey to Aberdeen.  It’s normal for me to do things like that, usually at the last minute.  This time I couldn’t.  Rubbish. 😦  I filmed a few videos of him but the sound quality is a bit pants.

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ROGUE TAXIDERMY:

Taxidermy was very popular during the Victorian era as a means of decorating the home.  Rogue taxidermy involves combining animal parts together (that would make a unique and totally-not-real animals…) or entirely made up by the taxidermist artificially.  Many taxidermists don’t consider it real taxidermy.  Apparently when the platypus was discovered, it was originally mistaken for rogue taxidermy.  They thought that someone had sewn together a duck’s beak to something like a beaver.

I don’t remember his name but he was at the exhibition doing some real taxidermy!  It was rather fascinating, really. I could have watched him all day but I figured he might think I was a bit strange. Instead I had a look at the rest of his stuff…

Rogue Taxidermy. Gross and yet strangely fascinating...!

Rat thing with wings…  

Furry-thing with horns

This one was my favourite.  A tea-drinking hare. Awesome!

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There were other things there too.  In one of the rooms was a long table surrounded by lots of children and a few grown-ups in costume.  In turned out the table had hats on it and ribbons and feathers.  Lots of feathers!  They were using them to decorate the hats.  I got chatting to one of the dressed-up grown-ups and he told me that the RSPB was founded by a lady named Emily Williamson.  Hats with feathers were very fashionable in the Victorian era, so much so that some birds were in danger of being lost forever.  Fashion generally works in cycles and over time feathers became unfashionable.  Now most feathers used in fashion are artificial. And thanks to Emily, the RSPB continues to try to protect birds even today… and they don’t just ‘do’ birds, either.

I love seeing children creating.  It’s something I had feared would be in decline, but look at this!  Look at all these beautiful things they made!

Apologies for the blurriness…! People have a tendency to move!

Also, just next to the hat-decorating, was another table where there were a few people learning how to embroider, cross-stitch and knit.  I took another photo…!

I would have loved to have sat with them and knitted or stitched something, but I figured I probably wouldn’t be allowed.

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In yet another room was a dude.  A dressed up dude.  The idea was that if someone banged the gong, he would sing you a song.  The song he was singing?  “I Know A Song That Will Get On Your Nerves.”  Yep.  I found it funny, myself.  I stuck around a bit to see how long it would take for him to annoy himself!  But that wasted valuable exploring time so I set off yet again…

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I learned about how the Victorians liked to play with science.  When they invented things, they liked to show how it worked.  And they liked to scare people. One guy (I forget his name now) would invite people to a big event.  They would think they were coming to see a science experiment or something like that.  When they all arrived, he locked all the doors, turned out all the lights and made loud noises and released crates of birds into the crowd to scare them silly. 

Also, they would set up séances and using something that looks like a camera with a huge lens (like a projector), flame (the light source) and a picture (the “ghost”).  Someone would stand behind a curtain or something at the back of the room, but there had to be a gap for the projector’s lens and they had to be careful not to be seen by everybody else.  When the host called out to the “ghost” – let’s say they’ve asked for Grandpa Tom – the person with the hand-held doohickie would project an image of An Old Man.  They would project it on something like a curtain – which keeps the real identity of the Old Man ambiguous (and so fooling those gathered that it really is Grandpa Tom.)  To make the image appear to move towards them (by taking steps forward) or away from them (by taking steps backwards), the crowd could be fooled into thinking the “ghost” was real.

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In another room (the one where all the china and ceramics is – I forget what it’s called) was a big table.  They were teaching children how to lay the table.  Just in front of the table was this…

Interesting, huh?  I thought so.

I wish I had taken more photos (or more decent photos to be precise; these were the better ones!)  I also wish I’d gotten there earlier.  I missed so much. 

Can we do this again soon, Kelvingrove?  Please?