I was looking forward quite a lot to the visit to London as I really wanted to go to the Natural History Museum particularly to look at insects and animals. I was quite unwell on this day but I knew I wouldnt have another opportunity to get back to London and visit the museum again in the recent months.
The first things we looked at were the sea creatures room showing a lot of the larger mammals that I couldnt see in the aquarium, and also an interesting moon display which was actually a very calming room so it was nice to walk through there. I was looking partilarly for insects, but the only room we really found was more aimed towards children, I managed to get a few photos in there for inspiration on shapes and colour, but overall I knew I had to look elsewhere, thats when I remembered the Darwin centre.
There were some interesting displays in the Darwin centre, but again I expected more, but I expected that the research was being kept in the back as they were not really something for public display, they were collected for research purposes. I wish I had had the forethinking to contact the museum before the visit and try and arrange to get inside and see more, but on this day I contacted someone at Cardiff museum that I had worked with on a photography consultancy job and she directed me to a Dr Mike Wilson who I am currently talking to about coming and exploring the insects in Cardiff Museum archives.
The range of creatures in the Darwin centre was really interesting and I think that the shapes are inspiring as to what patterns I could make out of them. I did not see so much in terms of colour which I was hoping for after seeing some of the amazing jewel beetle species online.
Another wing of the Darwin centre is home to preserved species that are kept in jars, I think these are really interesting as they preserve the texture and colour of the species, and I love that through a glass window you can see that there are hundreds of these jars in storage with a range of species.
As we were about to leave thinking we had found all that we could find, we came across a large glass display full of insects that I found very pretty. There was a great range of shapes and colours which I think are much more of what I was looking for, I could imagine these being very pretty patterns.
Even the giftshop here was interesting and provided some interesting cards as well as some books I found on insects with some vibrant illustrations of jewel beetles. This was the kind of colour intensity I was looking for and I think this is something to really think about for the upcoming module I think.
I really love the range of costumes on display at the V&A as well as the fashion exhibitions, I thought this was a really nice end to the day to look around the costumes which in themselves have really interesting texture and techniques in them that could be useful for my own development.
Tahlia Paige 