Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the Danish/Norwegian duo, made an impact in London with their statue of a young boy on a golden rocking horse on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth last year.  Their project “Tomorrow” is installed in the former and currenlty-unused textile galleries in the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The scene is a grand apartment for a fictional architect, Norman Swann, who at 74 years old is disillusioned, bankrupt and having to move out of his family home, the contents of which will be sold   While the location is South Kensington, the feel is continental, like those 19th century classical apartments in Paris or Barcelona and is laid out as a stage-set for a play, where we the audience is invited to guess the history of the life of this man through the objects which Elmgreen and Dragset have selected from the museum’s collections, supplemented by finds from elsewhere.  The feeling is of a man, once successful and imaginative, especially from the work he still has lying about in his study, but who became stuck at one point in time and his life never moved forward, sadly moving in a downward spiral to bankruptcy.

Available for the visitor, to reinforce the theatrical aspect of the installation, is the script of an evening in autumn 2013, just before Norman’s 75th birthday when his former pupil (perhaps more) Daniel Wilder, who has now bought the apartment, comes to show it off to his girl for the evening, Wendy………