The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal remains

From 13th May till 2nd October this year, the Victoria and Albert Museum (The V&A) will be running an exhibition dedicated to Pink Floyd.  The exhibition traces the history of the band from the beginning through their entire career up to the present.
It’s a full multimedia experience so on entry you’re given a set of Sennheiser headphones connected to a receiver which means that as you approach an exhibit you hear either a relevant piece of music or perhaps one of the band talking about something relevant.

The exhibition covers all aspects of the band including the album covers, and for example there’s a video talking to the designer Storm Thorgerson and the stuntman who appeared in flames on the cover of “Wish you were here”.  Storm Thorgerson appears in several videos around the exhibition in fact talking about the creation of various album covers at a time when photoshop didn’t exist, so all those surreal shots had to be done the hard way – in camera.

There’s a look at the technology used and how the albums were made and how they got some of the effects.  A nice interactive element lets you use a small mixing desk to adjust the song “Money”, with sliders for each of the instruments, vocals and the cash register sound, so you can hear how it sounds with a bit more bass or maybe the guitar brought up in the mix.

A look at the visuals for the tours is also fascinating with drawings showing the original concept, a model showing how the wall on “The Wall” tour was constructed and much more – including giant figures.

Alongside all the Pink Floyd specific material there is also some more general stuff in various red phone boxes around the exhibition, showing the cultural setting that Pink Floyd’s albums were released in.

All this is just a fraction of what is in the exhibition – there’s so much that you can easily spend a few hours there.

It’s an absolutely fantastic exhibition that is definitely worth a visit.

Tickets for the exhibition are priced at £20 and are on sale now at the V&A or online at wam.ac.uk/pinkfloyd as well as Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Encore and LOVETheatre.