As anyone who has ever tried to secure a booking at the London Fields Lido on a warm summer day will know, us Londoners love a good dip. So it’s only natural that the capital’s Design Museum should stage an exhibition dedicated to our adoration of swimming.
With more than 200 objects, Splash! presents a whistle-stop tour for water babies taking us all the way from bizarre Victorian bathing carriages, to the present-day mermaidcore TikTok trend. From the politics of the pool (and who gets to learn to swim) to the evolution of swimwear and pool architecture, Splash! covers a lot of ground. The show is split into three sections – the pool, the lido and nature – and perhaps the most fun part, each section is designed to mimic different swimming spaces which feature in the exhibit, including the London Aquatics Centre and the art-deco Penzance Jubilee Pool.
In the first part, ‘the pool’, is quite the collection of stuff, focussing largely on Olympic swimming – a model for the London Aquatics Centre, a swimming cap belonging to Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini, a jumper knitted by Tom Daley, and a 1984 David Hockney poster for the Los Angeles Olympics are all show. It also wouldn’t be an exhibition about pool design without some pretty Wes Anderson-style photography. The highly controversial LZR racer swimsuit is another gem on display – the suit designed by Speedo and NASA was responsible for 94 percent of swimming gold medals at Beijing 2008, and was subsequently banned for ‘technical doping’.
A section on resort holidays features some wonderfully retro, Martin Parr-sque Butlins postcards
‘The lido’ is the biggest and best part of the show. Its centrepiece is a massive collection of swimwear through the ages, from the OG midriff-exposing bikini (scandalous), designed in 1946 by French designer Louis Réard, to a fun collection of Speedo briefs from the ‘80s to present day. It presents an interesting insight into how our attitudes towards morality and nudity have changed over the past century; it turns out that the ‘free the nipple’ campaign might be traceable back to 1964 with the shocking monokini, a one piece with two thin straps across the chest, allowing the breasts to be proudly displayed.
I also enjoyed a peak at Vince Green’s men’s swimwear catalogues, which doubled up as softcore pornography for gay men in the 1960s, when homosexual activity was still illegal. A great section on the invention of the resort holiday features some wonderfully retro, Martin Parr-sque Butlins postcards. But the apex of it all is Pammy Anderson’s bright red Baywatch swimsuit. Such an iconic piece that it requires barely any context at all.
The final section of Splash! is a wild swimmer’s (wet) dream. We get gorgeous nature-style photography of Sydney’s natural water pools, and fun black-and-white images of the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond in the 1920s. The whole thing culminates with stories of swimmers, including from BBC presenter Summaya Mughal who documented learning to swim as an adult through her podcast ‘Brown Gal Can’t Swim’, and Roger Deakin’s swimming odyssey of Britain.
Splash! is a comprehensive, heartwarming, and even occasionally funny (the widely memed Dryrobe gets a shout-out) take on swimming. And you will definitely leave wanting to dive headfirst into a pool, the only thing missing is the smell of chlorine.
