Artist Manjit Patel takes a deep dive into the exhibition Splash! Buying a swimming costume is a rare and automated process for me, always black, and always just for the spa. It’s a true reflection of my poor relationship with water. So, it was with a mix of curiosity and mild dread that I headed to the Splash! exhibition at the Design Museum, running until mid-August.
The exhibition Splash! examines Britain’s 100-year relationship with swimming through the prism of design. Two hundred artefacts stitch together the story of swimming’s impact on fashion, architecture, society, and function.
Amber Butchart has done an admirable job curating this complicated history, successfully immersing you in the ebbs and flows between different themes. ScottWhitbyStudio has staged it beautifully, using layered lighting, sea-wave pop patterns, and a translucent curtain that envelops you while offering blurred perspectives of other rooms. The exhibition seeps through three sections: The Pool, The Lido, and Nature, each with its own colour scheme. The lifeguard orange is the real visual hero, and your camera will love it!
Butchart honours David Hockney’s influence right from the start, opening The Pool section with his 1984 LA Olympics poster. Sports lovers will enjoy this part for its focus on Olympic swimming. The controversial LZR racer suit stands proud, revealing its success, and then its downfall through ‘technical doping’. You’re left agreeing that the suit maketh the man, though Tom Daley’s tiny silver Speedos suggest that actually the man maketh the suit and a hand-knitted jumper too!
This section also explores swimming’s rise as a national pastime after the Great War, symbolising hope and health. Seaside holidays boomed in the 1920s, becoming accessible to all classes thanks to electric trams and expanding railways. Reverse gentrification soon created a demand for more exclusive destinations, and the French Riviera, branded as the place where fashions were set, worked its way into British culture.
These fashion trends unfold in the Lido section with a noticeably more relaxed scene. The main attraction is Pamela Anderson’s iconic red swimsuit from Baywatch with its high-cut leg and low-cut neckline. Its inclusion feels very apt, given that Anderson has recently reclaimed her image, now promoting wholesome living and natural beauty. A clever parallel in the exhibition to the Lido Revival we’re seeing today. The costume is presented as floating, and alerts us like a red beacon buoy to just how damaging the pressures of the ‘male gaze’ and terms like ‘beach-ready body’ were in the 90s.
The exhibition Splash! continues its socially conscious note here, highlighting narratives around gender non-conforming wearables, sun-conscious swimwear, and colourism, to name just a few. Personal favourites in the wider Lido collection include Hannah Whelan’s Blob Swimsuit, an act of “artivism” opening conversations around menstruation and menopause, and Victor & Rolf’s 2023 ‘embodiment’ couture swimsuit, a surreal sculptural celebration of their 30th anniversary.
Swimwear politics are also tackled, from the banned Burkinis to the cheeky mention of the Speedo (aka budgie smuggler), notorious in ‘80s Mediterranean culture for being the most unintentionally offensive of designs. It’s a good job Victor and Rolf didn’t get their hands on a pair!
Other cultural flashpoints appear, like the sarong, a swimwear piece David Beckham famously had a media moment with 30 years ago. Also, a 1967 Bollywood film poster for An Evening in Paris, featuring a Bollywood actress waterskiing on the Seine. A little lost in translation, but in this setting, the poster feels less like an idolisation of Western culture and more like a deliberate bridge to connect to the Indian diaspora.
Accessories have a small but stylish platform too: bathing shoes, swim caps, and my personal obsession —sunglasses. Born in military use and raised in Hollywood, they too became part of swimwear’s wider freedom fight that Splash! captures. Overall, the room leaves you reflecting on inclusivity and freedom in fashion.
The Nature section dives deeper into our relationship with water. A film about the Haenyeo women from a South Korean Island. Generations of female divers who harvest seafood without modern equipment. It shows a young woman describing the sea as both a friend and an ancestor. It’s a spiritual reminder of how powerful water can be. Black and white photos of the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond in Hampstead capture the solitary joy of wild swimming — a lifeline for so many during lockdowns. The benefits of open-water swimming, from channel crossings to cold-water immersions, are undeniable. Butchart also rightly draws attention to water’s darker side: for refugees, open water represents terror and displacement.
David Uzochukwu’s photo series Drown in My Magic imagines Black people as majestic merpeople, reclaiming freedom and belonging in water. The same theme echoes in Phoebe Boswell’s oil painting, challenging the stereotype that “Black people don’t swim” after learning that 95% of Black Britons don’t. Boswell invited sitters into an underwater studio to capture safety and belonging in water, rewriting the narrative in beautiful, defiant ways. A powerful note to the section, and the exhibition’s broader theme of belonging.
Mermaiding is the last mention, the practice of living or performing as a Merperson. It’s become a subcultural phenomenon and probably sits at the very opposite end of me on the swimming spectrum. But Splash! has got me wondering if I share some of the same deeper values: freedom, belonging, and the pull of something bigger. Amber Butchart talks about swimming as ‘this idea of becoming one with the horizon’, and these are all ideas I’m more than a little intrigued by at the time I leave.
I’m not rushing to swap my black cozzie for a tail just yet, but maybe I’m open to getting my hair wet a little more often than before. It’s a brilliant exhibition to catch this summer, because Splash! with its unapologetic exclamation mark has a way of nudging you to think differently about water, and your personal connection to it.
