Objecting to apartheid: disobedient objects at the V&A

Gavin has written a guest post for the Disobedient Objects blog hosted by the V&A Museum. Disobedient Objects is an exhibition “about the art and design produced by grassroots social movements” which will open at the V&A at the end of July, running until February 2015.

The exhibition examines the important role that material objects and design innovations play in movements for social change. It will assemble a diverse range of objects that have seldom been displayed together in the context of a museum. As their website catalogues, the show includes: “finely woven banners; defaced currency; changing designs for barricades and blockades; political video games; an inflatable general assembly to facilitate consensus decision-making; experimental activist-bicycles; and textiles bearing witness to political murders”.

Non-Stop Picket infrastructure, Spring 1989 (Source: Gavin Brown)

Gavin’s guest piece examines the fabric of the Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy, and thinks about the objects that were integral to the group’s anti-apartheid activism. The show will include a number of anti-apartheid badges from the 1980s, collected in the course of the ‘non-stop against apartheid’ research.