ALL EMPTIED OUT
As I write this we are on Coronavirus lockdown. Culture vultures must get their fix online. No museums or galleries are open and the much anticipated Bags: Inside Out exhibition at the V&A Museum is postponed. So, I thought I’d go back a while in time and revisit a remarkable exhibition I attended in 2012 at the Serpentine Galleries. And yes, the culture of the handbag was ‘forensically’ presented.
The exhibition headlined the humourist German artist, photographer and collector Hans-Peter Feldmann, who has been making art from ordinary items he has collected or photographed for around 50 years.
The starring exhibit for me was ‘Handbag as museum’. As part of his production Feldmann created an ‘installation’ of six glass display cases, each showing the eclectic contents of a woman’s handbag, along with the bag itself. The women retained really important things like their passports and credit cards and he photocopied their cash. Everything else was kept in. Only their first name, age and city (Berlin and Paris are two) identify them.
So, what inspired Feldmann? "I remember my mother and her handbag and it was a taboo to look at what was in it, a really strict taboo." Interestingly, I spied Chanel lipsticks, flat pumps, lots of business cards, theatre tickets, roll-ups, even earplugs. Feldmann paid each woman 500 Euros each to part with their stuff.
All of the contents were precisely placed in glass vitrines and visitors to the show learned that Susanne, 38, from Berlin, smokes an awful lot of Van Nelle tobacco roll-ups; that Stephanie, 43, from Paris, likes Haribo sweets, and Oriane, 27, from Berlin carries Ohropax classic ear plugs, aspirin, sunglasses, the single button in a plastic bag that you get from new clothes and never use, Issey Miyake deodorant, a city transport map and a well-used pair of flat shoes.
The then director of the Serpentine Galleries, Dame Julia Peyton-Jones said the bags were "a fascinating snapshot of contemporary design". I say, Damien Hirst, eat you heart out!
