Art and About: Cassette Playa's Carri Munden soaks up the romance and drama of Leighton House

A visit to a gallery or exhibition is about so much more than the art on the wall or the artefacts on show. Our new partnership, Art and About, developed in association with the Art Fund, sees four creatives head off to a diverse number of cultural institutions and share with us the moments of inspiration they encountered along the way. We armed each with a National Art Pass (use code FIVEOFF for a £5 discount) and documented their day.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been sharing these creatives’ insights, itinerary and reactions to what they saw and where they went. This time, we caught up with Carri Munden, AKA fashion designer Cassette Playa, who popped down to Pre-Raphaelites on Paper exhibition at Leighton House Museum in west London.

I discovered Leighton House last year, and it really blew my mind – it’s so beautiful. Leighton was a Pre-Raphaelite painter, and he was friends with loads of other painters, designers and architects, so his house is covered from floor to celling in patterns and woodcuts. The floor is all wonderful tiling and there’s William Morris curtains and things. I think people might be surprised that it’s where I chose to go, they might have thought I’d want to go to some digital art exhibition, but I love the Pre-Raphaelite era and those clashes of pattern, and the romance. I’m a total emo: everything I like to listen to, whether it’s metal or power ballads, is really dramatic.

09:30 Baxter’s Court Wetherspoons, Hackney Central E8

I live in Hackney and my studio is near the Wetherspoons, so it made sense to meet outside there. The ladies’ toilets there are beautiful. As it was quite early I’d been doing some emails, but I don’t really like people filming or photographing inside my studio – it feels like someone looking into my brain.

10:00 Hoi Polloi, Ace Hotel, Shoreditch E1

I love the breakfast at Hoi Polloi. I don’t really drink but it’s great going there at midnight for one of their amazing desserts. You have to go through this beautiful flower shop to get into the restaurant, so I love the surroundings as much as the food. I always love to surround myself with flowers – I was talking about Tokyo with the photographer, and saying that I really love over-stimulus. Some people might feel calm in a white, minimal setting, but that makes me really anxious.

11:00 Liverpool Street Station EC2 to Notting Hill W11

We walked to Liverpool Street and got a matcha bubble tea, and got on the train. We were meant to get off at Notting Hill but we were talking so much we missed the stop and had to get the bus from White City back through Kensington. I know some bits of west London quite well, like Shepherd’s Bush, Holland Park and Notting Hill, because I used to work in a little independent boutique called Euphoria on Lancaster Grove. I really like that it hasn’t changed that much since the early 2000s.

12:30 Leighton House Museum SW1

We had a guided tour at first, and it was so interesting to learn about how they change the space for different exhibits. At the moment there’s a series of drawings from various Pre-Raphaelite artists, some were sketches and some were preliminary drawings for paintings. As they were pencil drawings the windows had to be blacked out, so I’d love to go back and visit when they weren’t. The house was Leighton’s studio too, so it has the most amazing light.

13:00

We were left to our own devices, and when I’m looking round an exhibition I don’t feel like I have to look at every single thing – if I’m not interested in something, I just move on. With this exhibition it was more about personal interest rather than how much it might influence my work. I just love the Pre-Raphaelites’ work and the house itself: it’s so dark, and there are so many rich colours and patterns everywhere that it feels really immersive.

I take a lot of pictures and I guess one thing from this show that will influence my work is the styling. I love the Pre-Raphaelite women’s hair: they were the feminists of their day, they refused to wear corsets and had this wild hair. It’s quite sexual, that’s why they were seen as so rebellious. There are a lot of Medieval references in Pre-Raphaelite work so I take references from those for headpieces and things. I go to the British Museum a lot and take pictures of the jewellery there, using the graphics and the forms as inspiration but make it my own.

I love the drawing rooms at Leighton House, I think they’re called The Romantic Middle Ages. There are loads of sketches and portraits, and there are so many stories in those. I love storytelling and I’m always trying to tell stories in my work, through the characters and things.

14:00 Holland Park W8

We walked back through Holland Park, which is one of my favourite parks in London. They have a Japanese garden for reflection with koi carp and a waterfall. I hadn’t seen the peacocks there for years, but we saw them and one did the mating display for us!

It reminded me of my favourite room at Leighton House, The Arabic Hall – that’s what blew my mind when I went last year. I knew there was a lot of Orientalism in Pre-Raphaelite work but Leighton had one of the best collections of Islamic tiles in the world. He built this amazing meditative space with a fountain in the middle and a chaise longue. We hung out in there loads: the more I looked, the more I saw. As much as going to exhibitions is inspiring to me, I also find it meditative and an important relaxation. I love an adventure whenever I have free time.

A National Art Pass offers 50% off major exhibitions, plus free entry to hundreds of charging museums, galleries and historic places across the UK. The really good bit? Funds raised through the pass allow the Art Fund to help museums and galleries buy important works of art for everyone to enjoy. Learn more about the National Art Pass here and use the offer code FIVEOFF to receive £5 off the total price.

Or get in touch to find out how it’s available to you and your colleagues in the creative industries through the Art Fund’s corporate scheme.