Splash! - Soo Burnell at the Design Museum

Most of us have memories around swimming, whether it’s childhood lessons and summer trips to the beach or heading for holidays somewhere warm. Last year, a major exhibition titled ‘Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style’ reflected on our love of water over the last 100 years. Held at the Design Museum in London between March and August 2025, theexhibition told the story of swimming from the 1920s – when swimwear began to be marketed for swimming rather than the Victorian eras preference for bathing – to the present day, and examined the role of design within this.

The exhibition explored our relationship with swimming not only as an activity but more widely with exhibits highlighting the social and cultural impact of swimwear – Pamela Anderson’s famous Baywatch swimsuit made an appearance as one of the 200 exhibits. Curated by dress and design historian Amber Butchart along with the Design Museum’s

Tiya Dahyabhai, and with exhibition design by ScottWhitbyStudio, the exhibition was thematically divided into three sections: the pool, the lido, and nature (seas, rivers and lakes), with exhibits on advertising, fashion, sports – notably the Olympics – and architecture 

Soo’s work was featured within ‘the pool’ exhibit alongside a diverse selection of pieces including an architectural model of the London Aquatics Centre, which was designed by Zaha Hadid, and a poster for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics featuring David Hockney’s Swimmer, 1982.

Photographed in the Marshall Street swimming pool in London’s Soho area, Soo’s photograph reflects her love of symmetry and her dreamlike colour palette. The figures are captured within the stillness of the scene, in the moment before diving into the glass-like water. 

“I enjoyed the diversity of the displays, from the vintage swimwear to the sepia-tinted photographs of swimmers breaking the ice on Kenwood ladies’ pond in London in the 1920s. It was an intriguing selection of pieces and images and film footage that really highlighted the impact of pools, both indoors and out, and in the way our relationship with swimming and with these spaces has evolved over the last century.”