Kilt&Clans: Scottish Tartan-Exhibition
Design Museum V&A Dundee presents the first major exhibition in Scotland in 30 years to focus solely on tartan
The latest Tartan exhibition in Scotland takes a radical new look at an instantly recognisable textile and pattern.
Celebrating tartan and its global impact, the exhibition explores how tartan has connected and divided communities worldwide, how it has embraced tradition, expressed revolt, and inspired great works of art as well as playful and provocative designs. “Tartan is at once the pattern of Highland myth and legend, forever entwined with Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite uprising, as well as being the pattern of 1970s punks and contemporary Japanese fashion influencers”, says V&A Dundee Director Leonie Bell.
The exhibition brings together a dazzling selection of more than 300 objects from over 80 lenders worldwide, illustrating tartan’s universal and enduring appeal through iconic and everyday examples of fashion, architecture and art amongst others. The exhibition takes a radical new look at tartan, juxtaposing historical objects with the contemporary and is laid out in five sections where visitors can immerse themselves in the world of Tartan.
Its importance and enduring appeal as a textile has been utilised by designers throughout history, with some of fashion’s most innovative and rebellious minds exercising their refined cutting skills on tartan as a fabric. This is reflected with pieces by Chanel, Dior, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Comme des Garçons, alongside the work of contemporary designers inspired by tartan including Grace Wales Bonner, Owen Snaith and Olubiyi Thomas.
Tartan includes objects that illustrate the global translation, appropriation, reach and appeal of tartan across cultures and borders. The indigenous textiles of Indian Madras and East African Shuka cloth are explored in relation to tartan in the exhibition. Global, diasporic and even out of this world connections are represented too, with an ensemble made from Canadian Maple Leaf tartan and a fragment of MacBean tartan taken aboard Apollo 12 in November 1969 by American astronaut Alan Bean.
Consultant curator Professor Jonathan Faiers, says: “The diversity that this exhibition encompasses is an indication of the significant position that tartan occupies as a visual representation of historical, political and economic shifts within society.”
The spectrum of how tartan has been worn is also covered in the exhibition, from an eighteenth-century tartan dress coat for the Ancient Caledonian Society, to a significant photograph from around 1908 of Scottish Suffragettes proudly wearing tartan sashes. From Sir Jackie Stewart’s racing helmet with its distinctive Royal Stewart tartan band, through to contemporary streetwear from Japan.
To commemorate this landmark exhibition, V&A Dundee has commissioned Kilt maker Kinloch Anderson to design a new tartan to be used as the museum's exclusive tartan and developed a range of merchandise in collaboration with designers in Scotland. V&A Director Leonie Bell: “Tartan lives in the worlds of high fashion and tourism souvenirs, military uniform and palaces, football stadiums and concerts. It is adored and derided, has inspired great works of art and design, and somehow can represent unity and dissent, tradition and rebellion, the past, the present and the future.”
Tartan, V&A Dundee, until 14 January 2024
(Fotocredits: Designer Siobhan Mackenzie Tartan,VA Dundee; Tartan at VA Dundee, Robert MacNab _b.1822_ and Donald MacNaughton, 1812- 69, by Kenneth Macleay; Tartan VA Dundee Tartan, And The Grid; Kilted yogi Finlay Wilson at VA Tartan.
