38 BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
like an afterthought. Tere is a panel about lidos in one corner, with a few seaside posters scattered around, and some testimonials from people who have campaigned successfully to save their outdoor pool. But the costumes are the core of the show, which, while illustrating changing attitudes and textile advances, never look less interesting than when pinned behind glass or draped over a mannequin. Te most outlandish confections here simply look daftly unwearable. Te Pamela Anderson Baywatch costume exhibit has grabbed attention for this show (as have Tom Daley’s speedos), but to me it just looks like an ordinary red costume, suspended in its glassy vitrine, lacking those famous curves. For a much more immersive dive into the design history of beach and pool culture I couldn’t help referring back to the show Art Deco by the Sea, which opened in February 2020 (a momentous month, with) at the Sainsbury’s Centre for Contemporary Art in
Norwich. By focusing on the interwar period and the art deco aesthetic, it was able to situate the lifestyle and fashion aspects of swimwear within the whole burgeoning of lidos, seaside hotels and holiday camps powered by a distinctive architecture and design aesthetic, and facilitated by the growth of affordable rail travel and motor car ownership. Tere the period swim and leisure wear, marked by curves, flowing lines and
There is a smattering of social history elements, including a film about how high drownings are among young first nation communities and people of colour
joyous colour palettes, seemed like a gorgeous expression of that art deco spirit, and the whole definitely added up to more than the sum of its parts. Here, the show does no more than touch
on the phases of tourism and lifestyle fads that have ushered swimming in and out of popularity. It barely engages with the architecture of the pool – a fascinating subject I could expound on for hours, having gone many laps in every kind of pool, from lidos and the classic Victorian baths to architectural icons of 1970s Olympic pools. Tere is reference to the distinctive, triangular lido, the Jubilee Pool, in Penzance, recently restored by the same architects who designed this show, ScottWhitbyStudio. Tere’s also an architectural model of Zaha Hadid’s 2012 Olympic pool, which I swam in once, but felt disinclined to ever enter again, as it was clearly designed more for the pleasure of spectators than swimmers (the main,
PHOTO: ALEXANDRA UTZMANN
PHOTO: © SKY CUBACUB
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