Matthew Darbyshire’s Design Exhibition Examines The Effects Of “Fast” Cultural Trends.

Bureau, Herald Street, 2014. Photography courtesy of Herald Street

Now on show in London is Matthew Darbyshire’s ‘An Exhibiton for Modern Living’. The exhibition borrows its name from a modern-design show at the Detroit Institute of Art back in 1949, a highly optimistic time when the city had America’s highest median income. The city is now dilapidated – ruined from a combination of globalization, inefficiency and its own hubris; it’s an unfortunate parallel to Darbyshire’s own work.

The crux of the exhibition is the curious reflection of change in the face of fast food winning over consumers with ‘curated’ interiors. It is meant to be a curious reflection in the overlap in taste, class and accessibility that has been lost in changing society.