The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Night fever revisited as music and style meet
It’s hard not to strut a little bit at the V&A’S new exhibition, Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, which opens to the public tomorrow. It’s been a hard year. We deserve a strut.
It hasn’t been the easiest time to bring something of this scale together, and with Leonie Bell only coming into her role as director in July 2020, it’s clearly a huge relief that she can see people come back into the building and into a new exhibition.
“I can’t wait to welcome people back into the building,” she says.
“The nature of the exhibition is obviously celebratory, but there’s also a real poignancy with so many clubs and music venues still closed.”
This will be the only UK showing of Night Fever, which was developed by the Vitra Design Museum and ADAM – Brussels Design Museum.
However, the team in Dundee has curated an additional room celebrating Scottish clubbing.
“I had no idea how difficult it would be to lead an organisation that was closed,” said Leonie.
“We had to work that bit harder and, of course, the technicians from Vitra couldn’t come over so we were checking in online every day.
“And, of course, the challenges of opening at this time and the safety measures we have to put in place.”
Even knowing what the exhibition would look like, Leonie has been surprised at how well the spaces are designed, with the graphics and lighting bringing the stories to life.
“We start in Italy in the 1960s and it goes on to disco in 1970s New York,” she said.
“When you think of the societal changes that it covers, this is as much a brilliant social history exhibition as it’s a design exhibition.”
Glasgow School of Art curator Mairi Mackenzie worked on the section of Night Fever which focuses on Scotland’s unique club culture.
It includes legendary nights in Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paisley.
She said: “People in Scotland like to go out – they’re really good at it and they love having a good time.
“There has been no shortage of amazing night clubs, dance halls and venues so it was really hard to narrow it down.
“I took the dates where I saw the culture shifting (1987–1997) and picked clubs that I thought represented a range of experiences in that period.
“Even though a lot of the things that took place in Scottish nightlife happened all over the UK, there’s something quite particular about the aesthetic and feel of Scottish clubs.
“There’s a warmth, a humour and a connectedness between the clubs that I really found special.”
Mairi added: “I have so many memories that have been stirred up by this exhibition – it’s super evocative, it’s taken me back to amazing nights that I’d forgotten about or hadn’t thought about in a long time.”
V&A Dundee curator Kirsty Hassard also believes the exhibition “showcases how important nightclubs are to culture – within Scotland and the UK”.
“I love the first section of the exhibition which looks at Italian radical design and showcases the amazing minds and imagination that was going on and how that… really pushed forward what a nightclub was,” she said.
“Working on the Scottish section of the exhibition has been hugely nostalgic for me – just thinking how long it’s been since I was in a club.”
Sam Paton, from the Isolated Heroes part of the exhibition, was enthused by the whole experience.
“I just want to be on a night out now,” Sam said.
Sam was dressed from head to toe in sparkly pieces from her Dundeebased fashion house’s new collection, the acid house-inspired Hardcore Happiness, which is the official partner with Night Fever.
For Sam, clubbing provides a “freedom of self-expression”.
She reckons the best club experiences come from “finding your tribe – in your best outfits”.
“The Reading Rooms was the best place to be,” she said. “I’ve made many a friend there – and worn many an outfit!”
Our names were on the list – and we got in. But what does Night Fever: Designing Club Culture have to offer the dancing queens (and kings) of all eras?
Even though I was still in my 20s, I had all but given up clubbing by 1990.
Maybe we have a window when it’s important to us, when we need to be creatures of the night and find our people under the strobe lights.
What Night Fever: Designing Club Culture does is transport us to our place in the clubbing timeline, which here starts in the 1960s.
It also makes us wish that we could have had a taste of every other decade – oh to have been in Italian clubs at the beginning of the journey. Those chairs!
The exhibition spaces have just that – space to breathe and to stand back and enjoy the lights, the graphics, the installations, the clothes – and the music, of course.
The rooms have life and colour and excitement – something that can be difficult to achieve with some static exhibits, but each has been carefully curated and gives us a greater understanding of how important design is to how we experience clubs – and how they make us feel.
There are moments of sheer bliss like the silent disco where, with headphone covers supplied, you can enjoy clubbing music across the decades in a multisensory box.
What Night Fever: Designing Club Culture does is transport us to our place in the clubbing timeline... and makes us wish that we could have had a taste of every other.
The Scottish section (free to view to all) is a beautifully personal walk down memory lane with the clothes, the sweaty dance floors, the adventures travelling to clubs in other cities.
And yes, John Travolta looms large in one of the rooms.