This graphic montage of texts and images was Dagworthy’s contribution to the exhibition ‘Super Contemporary – Designed in London’. The exhibition, curated by Daniel Charny, was shown at the Design Museum, London (2009) and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2011). It presented the curator’s selection of the most significant designers and artists working in London from the 1960s to the present day.
The curator invited Dagworthy to create one of the ‘personal maps’ he was commissioning from leading figures from the fields of architecture, graphics, fashion and product design from the period covered by the exhibition. Dagworthy collaged material from her sketchbooks, correspondence and designs, drawing on her practice over the period 1968–2010 as a fashion designer, entrepreneur and instigator of London Fashion Week. The images and texts were related to a map of London to illustrate the scope of her contribution to the culture of the city through reference to the specific locations where they were enacted.
The montage structure provided Dagworthy with the opportunity to consider her collected individual designs within a single narrative structure and reflect on the interrelations between each of these and her overall growing contribution to the fashion industry in the UK, which was established in the period.
‘Super Contemporary’ was shown at the Design Museum from June to October 2009, where it was seen by 48,262 visitors (and 82,367 visitors viewed the exhibition webpage). It then travelled to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, where it was shown from August to November 2011, to coincide with the Taiwan World Design Expo 2011. The Taipei show was seen by over 75,000 visitors.
The research Dagworthy undertook for ‘Super Contemporary’ also informed the open lecture she gave at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, China, in November 2009.