SMOUT ALLEN
INFRACTUS
Introduction A World of Fragile Parts explored threats facing global heritage sites and how the production of copies can aid in the preservation of cultural artefacts by engaging the long curatorial history of casts, copies and replicas. Its central focus was the ‘copy’: the first section surveyed the history of art and architectural copies with a display of plaster casts and related objects from the V&A’s Cast Courts; and the second presented a ‘twenty-first century cast court’ consisting of objects that used digital technologies for heritage copying. 13 contemporary practitioners were invited to take part in this reimagined cast court, including Smout Allen. The exhibition’s motivating question was: What is the role and function of digital copies today? The historical survey established that the Cast Court collections were intended for educational or exhibition purposes, not in the main to preserve. The plaster copy was the nineteenth century’s ‘mass-medium for dissemination’, exchanged amongst cultural institutions for the improvement of knowledge, and largely untroubled by the questions of authenticity that influence our contemporary appreciation of replica objects (Lending 2018). Yet, over time, the value of the V&A’s copies has shifted as many plaster casts have outlived their originals: the best known example is the full-scale brick and plaster replica of Trajan’s Column (1864), which is now more ‘perfect’ than its Roman original (AD 107–113) that has been severely degraded due to acid rain wash erosion (V&A 2017). Thus, the V&A copies now act as critical backups for their historical originals and are important for preservation efforts.
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4 Erecting the cast of Trajan’s Column, c.1873. 5 Robin Hood Gardens, 1972. The central communal garden showing the large mound built on rubble from the demolished Victorian terraces that the estate replaced. 6 Robin Hood Gardens, 1972. ‘Streets in the sky’.
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