Calum Storrie

Calum Storrie’s practice has shifted from exhibition design to drawing. This site is in a similar state of transition.

Calum Storrie worked in the museum and exhibition field from 1986 to 2022 gaining experience in private practice and at the British Museum.

In 1998 he set up his own studio and worked with many national collections and smaller museums.

In his role as exhibition designer Calum’s clients included the Courtauld Collection, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, Wellcome Collection and the Museum of London.

He is the author of the The Delirious Museum; from the Louvre to Las Vegas published by I. B. Tauris. In 2017 this was published by Johan & Levi Editore in a revised and expanded version in Italian as Delirious Museum; un viaggio dal Louvre a Las Vegas.

Calum Storrie's Instagram is here.

Wellcome Collection, London

Tibet’s Secret Temple, 2016

For the Wellcome Collection exhibition Tibet’s Secret Temple, I created a series of rooms arranged in a spiral around the central space showing murals from the Lukhang Temple in Llhasa. The thematic rooms were distinguished by vibrant colours and overlapping planes.

Lighting – DHA Designs
Graphics – Wellcome Trust Design Office
Photographs – Wellcome Collection

Forensics, 2015

Forensics explored the history, science and art of forensic medicine. The exhibition included original evidence, archival material, photographic documentation, film footage, forensic instruments and specimens, and artworks.

From the initial proposal to the finished exhibition the layout of Forensics changed very little. The brief identified a number of themes that were translated into spaces with their own identities and atmospheres: ‘the Crime Scene’, ‘the Morgue’, ‘the Laboratory’, ‘the Search’ and ‘the Courtroom’. The design exploited a number of different visual effects using, for instance, a two-way mirrored wall and a long tunnel making a transition from a light room into darkness.

Lighting – DHA Designs
Graphics – Wellcome Trust Design Office
Photographs – Wellcome Collection

GRAD, London, 2013-16

This small not-for-profit gallery in central London is devoted to various aspects of Russian and Soviet art and design. My work for them has involved making a number of distinctive interiors at short notice and within a limited budget. This allows for a degree of experimentation.

All pictures courtesy of GRAD.

All graphics: Katya Sivers

Unexpected Eisenstein, 2016

The design here created a semi-enclosed ‘cinema’ space that was interrupted by the grid layout of the cases. The half drum also served to create a title wall and an oblique entry into the exhibition.

Bolt, 2015

Shadows from the central structure here were ‘projected’ onto the walls creating a series of disorienting planes.

A Game in Hell: The Great War in Russia, 2014

The labyrinthine layout of this documentary exhibition used, as its starting point, the alleyways and impasses of the trenches.

Work and Play Behind the Iron Curtain, 2014

This exhibition on Soviet design used a central plinth that mimicked the ziggurat of Lenin’s mausoleum.

Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Era, 2014

Installing the exhibition with the curator, Lutz Becker

See USSR, 2013

The first exhibition at GRAD dealt with Soviet travel posters. The showcases and plinths have been re-used and adapted on a number of occasions.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Virginia Woolf, 2014

Graphics – NPG in-house design office
Photographs – National Portrait Gallery

This exhibition told a complex story in a relatively small space through paintings, photographs and written texts. The design responded to the importance of certain interiors in Woolf‘s life by suggesting a series of overlapping rooms. At the same time it reflected a curatorial desire to place Woolf‘s ideas and work within the context of Modernity.

Courtauld Gallery, London

The Young Dürer Drawing the Figure

Photograph of plinths for double-sided drawings, Dürer exhibition, Courtauld Gallery, London

Plinths for double-sided drawings, one of a number of projects for showcases and other display elements for the Courtauld Gallery.

Photograph courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery.

Museum of Innocence

A fragment of Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul that came to Somerset House in 2016. The small display referred to the Museum’s interior whilst creating a separate identity making the most of the domestic scaled spaces in which it was installed.

Graphics: Amy Preston
Photographs courtesy of Somerset House.

view of exhibition showcases mounted on a curved dark red wall

miscellaneous household objects suspended in front of a dark red wall with dramatic lighting

Oslo

In 2017 a second version of the exhibition was installed in the Kulturhistorisk Museum, Oslo as 'Orhan Pamuk; The Art of Fiction'. This installation exploited the possibilities of a single long room by taking visitors on a dramatic journey through the exhibition.

Kulturhistorisk Museum, Temporary Exhibitions, Orhan Pamuk

Photo: Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo / Ellen C. Holte

view of exhibition with deep red walls and showcases with dramatic lighting

REST & its discontents

At the Mile End Art Pavilion. Designed in collaboration with Caitlin Storrie.

This exhibition, curated by Robert Devcic of GV Art, was organised as part of the HUBBUB research project under the auspices of Wellcome Trust. The display was conceived as a series of pavilions and fragments of walls accommodating varied exhibits from visual and sound art to a temporary radio station. Here is an interview with one of the initiators of the project, James Wilkes.

Studio International / Hubbub

Photographs courtesy of Caitlin Storrie and Peter Kidd.

entrance to REST exhibition with title in 1.5 metre high three-dimensional cardboard letters

entrance to REST exhibition with title in 1.5 metre high three-dimensional cardboard letters

entrance to REST exhibition with title in 1.5 metre high three-dimensional cardboard letters

entrance to REST exhibition with title in 1.5 metre high three-dimensional cardboard letters

Drawings

These drawings are from before 2020. My recent work can be found at calumstorrie.art.

Drawing 001, axonometric of imaginary city by Calum Storrie

Drawing 003, axonometric of imaginary city by Calum Storrie

Drawing Works Four, axonometric of imaginary city by Calum Storrie

Drawing Works1001, axonometric of imaginary towers by Calum Storrie

Drawing Works2002, axonometric of imaginary towers by Calum Storrie

City, plan of imaginary city by Calum Storrie

Harbour, axonometric of harbour by Calum Storrie

Slowly Descending, collage drawing by Calum Storrie

Calypso 1001, collage drawing by Calum Storrie

Other things

Drawings and Other Noises

In May 2017, I showed a selection of my drawings in the exhibition 'Drawings and Other Noises' at Park Studios, London. This was a collaboration with Geoff Winston (A Sculpture Fell in my Coffee) who also designed the booklets that accompanied the exhibition.

exhibition catalogue booklet with title and image of a collage drawing

view of framed and unframed works on paper, hung informally

view of small gesture drawings based on musical experiences

Museum of Capitalism

I wrote an essay for the catalogue of the (temporary) Museum of Capitalism in Oakland California. The essay is called 'Between the Archive and the Street'. You can see the book here.

Museum of Capitalism

exhibition catalogue booklet with title and image of a collage drawing

Interim Proposal

Interim proposal for a new wing to house the collection of ‘installation and performance art’ of the Delirious Museum, Department of Art, 2009. Download pdf.

Artists Work

In 2013, I contributed to a book of essays: ‘Artists Work in Museums: Histories, Interventions, Subjectivities’, edited by Matilda Pye and Linda Sandino. The book was published by Wunderkammer Press in association with the V&A. My essay is entitled After the Delirious Museum.

informal arrangement of the covers of four books featuring texts by Calum Storrie

Archive

My work prior to December 2012.

Archive
website front page for Calum Storrie's work prior to 2012, text and thumbnail images on white background