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V&A's epic Pink Floyd exhibition looks set to rival success of hit David Bowie show

V&A's epic Pink Floyd exhibition looks set to rival success of hit David Bowie show

A new Pink Floyd exhibition at the V&A has already proved to be a blockbuster success — with tickets for the first three days selling out immediately.

The show, called Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains, opens on Saturday for a 20-week run and organisers say tens of thousands of tickets have been sold.

It is set to rival the popularity of the South Kensington museum’s sell-out David Bowie exhibition, which drew more than 300,000 visitors.

The V&A had to arrange regular late night openings to meet demand for the Bowie show and even commissioned a film to be screened in cinemas up and down the country for Bowie fans who could not make it to London.

Fans of Pink Floyd, whose hit albums include The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon, will be able to follow their career from playing dingy clubs in London to selling out stadiums around the world.

The band have sold more than 250 million records since their 1967 debut, despite line-up changes which saw original frontman Syd Barrett fall victim to drug addiction and keyboard player Rick Wright and songwriter Roger Waters walk out at different times, before drummer and guitarist Nick Mason and David Gilmour called it a day. Waters, Mason and Gilmour have all given the show their blessing and went through their personal archives to provide exhibits including guitars, costumes and handwritten lyrics.

V&A curator Victoria Broakes, who also worked on the Bowie show, said the band’s trademark “visual” approach was also looked at with some of their distinctive album covers and set designs for show such as The Wall included in the “spectacular, immersive, theatrical show”.

One of the band’s psychedelic lightshows is recreated on site and staff from Stufish, the firm which worked on the gigs for The Wall which famously included a full-scale wall being built on stage during the concert, have helped design the exhibition.

They have installed a version of The Wall’s stage set complete with a giant inflatable schoolteacher.

A hologram showing the famous prism from the cover of The Dark Side Of The Moon has also been created.

Other objects include the cane used to punish Barrett and Waters during their school days in Cambridge and designs from Waters’s time studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic, which had a huge influence on the band’s approach to design.

There is also a detailed gig diary, kept by Mason, listing performances in Tottenham Court Road’s UFO Club where they were the house band before their popularity pushed them into bigger venues.

The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains opens on Saturday, May 13, for 20 weeks. Tickets at vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/pink-floyd