Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction

As soon as I heard that this new exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre (running June 3rd – Sept 1st 2017) was being curated by Patrick Gyger, it became a ‘must attend’ for me. I’d met Patrick a few times during his decade-long tenure at the Maison d’Ailleurs, while I was still active in the space industry and every time been bowled over by his knowledge.  He provided me with useful and welcome advice while I was putting together the space strand of the Earthwake science in television forum, held in Strasbourg in 2007.

The first thing you notice about the main exhibition is the extraordinarily broad range of things it brings together – ample testament to Gyger’s pull.  There’s a strong emphasis on material on paper (books, pulp covers, collectors’ cards, Soviet-era publications, film & TV concept art), again consistent with what I know of Gyger’s interests and priorities.  Display cases show off key books on each of SF’s main themes.  As a book nut, this was a joy to me; I had my pencil and paper out, noting down titles that were new to me (eg; Alexander Beliaev’s The Amphibian, Plutonia by Vladimir Obruchev) and I started to play a game – two points for a book on my shelves at home, five for the exact same edition (I scored 201).  It was nice to see that the Barbican shop had made an effort to stock the titles on display, even if most of the lesser-known ones were absent.  However I did pick up a copy of Ayn Rand’s dazzling Anthem, and read it on the flight home.

As already mentioned, the breadth of exhibits was impressive.  Ray Harryhausen was very well represented with extensive concept art from a several movies (my favourite was the unrealised man-eating plant from The Mysterious Island) and a clutch of latex dinosaurs including Gwangi himself.  I saw the actual H.R. Giger Harkonnen capo chair created for Jodorowsky’s Dune.  There were several gorgeous, painstakingly accurate models of vehicles out of Jules Verne (I think lent by the Éspace Jules Verne of the Maison D’Ailleurs) including the Nautilus, the Albatros and the Lunar train.  There was the original Spindrift, which took me back to Saturday mornings as a kid and the submarine from Fantastic Voyage.  I could go on.

Modern movies were well represented.  There were props from Interstellar, Moon, Alien, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, various Godzilla’s, Star Wars, to name a few and, my favourite of all, the quite beautiful Horus and Anubis masks from Stargate.  To accompany the props, there were clips showing at various points ranging from iconic SF moments (Rover’s first appearance in The Prisoner), through early, historically important films (some fascinating Soviet stuff here), to quirky curios like the Turkish Star Wars (think space-suited actors in the foreground with a bootleg Star Wars space battle backdrop, the aspect ratio tweaked to make it look original – the rugby-ball-shaped Death Star is a hoot).

I had a number of gripes with the exhibition.  First off, the narrow, crescent shaped, high-ceilinged exhibition space being used was a disaster, for several reasons.  Some of the major movie props on view were too high-up to be easily studied and there were several points in the walk-through, where display cases were blocked by other attendees standing to watch film clips projected onto an adjacent wall.  I was there at a quiet time too; this issue would have been far worse had it been full.

Attendees were encouraged to take their own photos but the display of items was not photo-friendly, due to reflections and glare.  More attention could have been given to this aspect.  The catalogue (yes I bought one – £35.00) was both impressive and disappointing.  What it covered was great but it was very much slanted towards books, magazines and paintings.  There was sparse attention given to the movie and TV props on show in the exhibition.  I don’t know if this was due to a copyright conflict or what but the practical consequence of all this was that I had stopped taking photos, assuming the objects would be featured in the catalogue only to discover afterwards that they were not.  This annoyed me greatly – I would strongly recommend that anyone attending, intending to buy a catalogue does so (and looks through it) before walking around the exhibition.  That way you can ensure that you can photograph the things not featured in it, if you want a record of them.

There were a few satellite exhibits elsewhere in the Barbican.  I don’t think I located them all; the signposting was not great and in addition, part of the building was cordoned off for a ‘private event,’ which meant detours.  Standout of the rest was the half-hour movie In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain, by Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind.  This was a none-too-subtle allegory on the Palestinian conflict, with a glorious central premise.  It came across to me as a Terry Pratchett-like idea, reflected through the philosophical prism of a Stanislaw Lem (think a female Ijon Tichy, dodging wackers in the world of Strata).