An array of products considerately placed around the perimeter of a large white room span the development of 50 years of Kenneth Grange’s prolific career. Soft lines, an attention to simple detail and rounded forms dominate. Parker pens, Anglepoise lamps, the Intercity 125 train, Kenwood food mixers and the new London black cab all feature. The work has uniformity, its functional, it has a simple subtle beauty in its lines and form, and it does what it set out to do and better than it was done before. Largely plastic with pastel colours his work is familiar, everyday, and commonplace. Apart from the couple of items that stand out nostalgically from my childhood such as the iconic Kodak camera and some of his working notes the mudanity of the exhibition leaves me longing to be wowed.
The supposed highlights of the exhibition are the designs you saw on the way there, the new taxi, the bus stop and bench. There is little in the way of notes to accompany these items, and your left thinking you could have just stood on a busy street, looked under your sink or your dads bathroom cabinet and you would have ticked off a proportion of the exhibits. This however, shows the breadth and impact of Kenneth work. When you look its everywhere and you realise slowly that Grange is a hero. Still it bores, but it is precisely because of this that he should be championed. Imagine a world where every functional object set out to wow, or impress, it would be a chaotic cacophony of mismatched styles all grabbing at your attention. Its in granges modest subtle style that seamlessly inoffensively fits into our world you realise he’s a master of design.
The items exist too weakly in isolation and the exhibition flops. Grange does not. I’m more interested in the man, the history and background and the processes. Which do not feature heavily enough in the exhibit.
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