In conversation with Peter King, designer behind Westwood Kawakubo exhibition

The NGV’s present summer season exhibition Westwood | Kawakubo brings collectively two of vogue’s most influential rule-breakers for the primary time. Born a 12 months aside and formed by totally different cultural contexts, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo every remodeled vogue by means of radical experimentation, difficult conventions of style, gender and wonder whereas redefining what clothes may very well be. That includes practically 150 groundbreaking designs from worldwide museums, personal collections and the NGV, the exhibition traces their practices from the mid-Seventies to as we speak by means of thematic pairings that reveal each shared provocations and stark contrasts.

Designed by Studio Peter King, the exhibition design is constructed on the precept of symmetry, presenting Westwood and Kawakubo as parallel but essentially distinct forces – like left and proper palms. This rigorously calibrated spatial dialogue heightens moments of convergence and pressure, making a dynamic framework by means of which their work will be skilled. On this dialog, Peter King displays on the concepts, challenges and design pondering behind this bold exhibition.

1. The place do you as a designer start with designing an exhibition like this? What’s your start line?

I joined the venture staff at NGV round twelve months in the past, and the work started in shut dialogue with the curators to know the narrative framework of the exhibition. An early focus was how this twin presentation may sit alongside NGV’s earlier exhibitions that paired two artists, akin to Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei and Haring | Basquiat.

These precedents helped information conversations in regards to the doable constructions for presenting Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo collectively, and the deserves of various spatial approaches. From there, the method deepened into analysis – into every designer’s historical past, their method to follow and design. My start line is all the time to think about how these qualities will be translated into house, ambiance and motion, in order that the exhibition design turns into an extension of the curatorial pondering reasonably than a backdrop to it.

2. The present explores each the shared radicalism and the stark variations between the 2 designers. How did you translate this into the design?

Early within the analysis stage, it turned clear that Westwood and Kawakubo share sufficient widespread floor to ask comparability, but their approaches to design and the style they create are essentially distinct. The problem was to design an exhibition that allowed each voices to exist clearly, with out collapsing these variations right into a easy symmetry.

This pressure turned the conceptual spine of the exhibition design by means of the concept of chirality: a property of objects which might be related, however can’t be completely mirrored. Like two palms – left and proper – seemingly an identical, but structurally opposed.

The spatial language of the exhibition unfolds from this precept by means of paired types, near-symmetry and delicate misalignment. These gestures create moments of visible and spatial echo whereas resisting excellent steadiness – reflecting how the 2 designers transfer in parallel, however by no means in imitation.

3. How is the customer journey choreographed? How do you handle the pacing, transitions and sensory shifts by means of such a big exhibition?

The physique is a key theme explored by the curators in Westwood | Kawakubo, and it additionally turned a basis for the exhibition design. Extending the concept of chirality, different components of the physique that exhibit symmetry had been adopted as metaphors for organising the galleries.

The primary room is impressed by the left and proper hemispheres of the mind. Inside this gallery, Westwood’s earliest collections are offered on the left-hand aspect, whereas on the precise, more moderen works conceived by Kawakubo unfold in parallel. This establishes the conceptual logic of the exhibition from the outset, with every subsequent gallery influenced by a special corporeal metaphor.

Because the exhibition progresses, the areas shift each spatially and sensorially. A smaller, intensely saturated crimson room referencing the center includes a kinetic lighting set up pulsing in sync with video. A following gallery, impressed by a pair of eyes, is visually distinct once more, with crisp white curved partitions and round home windows. The design technique continues by means of the ‘backbone’ and concludes with a pair of palms, permitting the exhibition to unfold as a sequence of discrete experiences – breaking a big exhibition right into a sequence of legible, paced moments.

4. With so many clothes to point out in addition to sound, movie, pictures and archival materials, how do you make it visually legible and never overwhelming?

I depend on a mix of conventional and digital instruments to check and refine concepts all through the venture. Sketching and planning are important early on, significantly when working in plan to map the curatorial narrative. It’s a bit like a jigsaw puzzle – you will have all of the items and they form they’ve to suit into, however they must be frequently turned and rearranged to make sense of the entire.

More and more, I work extensively in 3D, modelling the complete exhibition atmosphere and inserting every work as a digital object inside it. I method this course of very like a cinematographer, establishing key sightlines, framing moments of compression and launch, and anticipating the customer’s transitional views. From this mannequin, I produce video fly-throughs which might be shared with the venture staff to assist collaborative refinement. One of the crucial satisfying features of this course of is when NGV’s AV specialists add video and audio content material into these renders – the exhibition begins to return alive lengthy earlier than it’s constructed.

5. There are just a few “showstopping moments” – there’s Rihanna’s Met Gala petal ensemble and Westwood’s marriage ceremony gown from the Intercourse and the Metropolis film. How did the recognisability of those items affect your show/design selections, and did you are feeling a duty to current them in new or sudden methods?

I used to be strongly guided by the ethos of each Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo in approaching the exhibition design. Each are often known as rule-breakers, but in addition as deeply considerate designers, and I wished the exhibition to replicate that very same degree of care and mental rigour.

When working with extremely recognisable clothes, it’s vital to acknowledge how their familiarity influences customer behaviour. This implies giving them ample bodily and visible house, rigorously contemplating how they’re framed inside the structure, and paying attention to how their adjacency to different works can both elevate or dilute their influence. The purpose was to situate these iconic items inside a broader narrative, permitting them to resonate in new and sudden methods by means of context and distinction.

6. You’ve designed main vogue exhibitions earlier than, akin to The Home of Dior at NGV. How did this one evaluate to others you’ve carried out?

Practically a decade in the past, I labored with the identical core venture staff at NGV on The Home of Dior, together with curators Katie Somerville and Danielle Whitfield. It has been an actual pleasure to collaborate with this staff once more. There’s something personally satisfying about returning to the identical constructing and galleries to start once more and create one thing that feels solely new and sudden.

Colleagues usually comment when a brand new exhibition opens that it looks like strolling into a totally totally different set of areas, and listening to this validates a self-imposed problem. For Westwood | Kawakubo, my purpose was to conceive an exhibition design that was acceptable to those designers, aware of the curatorial imaginative and prescient, and on the calibre of vogue exhibitions for which NGV is thought. Now that the exhibition is open, I’m trying ahead to seeing how guests reply to it.

Westwood | Kawakubo is on on the Nationwide Gallery of Victoria till 19 April 2026.