Consultancy
The Tin Sheds Gallery
Curatorial Lead
I had the pleasure of providing curatorial oversight to the exhibitions within the Tin Sheds programme 2021–23. With the Tin Sheds Advisory board, we selected projects from an open call. I then collaborated with architects, artists, designers and academics, guiding projects from proposal submission to realisation. The extent of curatorial input varied on the projects, but I share a few here. I remain on the Advisory Board.
Fossil Fables
18 May – 8 July 2023
Fossil fables tells the stories of Australia’s fraught and complex relationship with extraction. It uses the tools of architecture to analyse and communicate the far reaching environmental, social and political implications of the country’s economic reliance on coal mining.
The works bring the vast unearthly energy landscapes which lie far removed from our cities, into the interior of the urban gallery. It places the narratives of the Hunter Valley, known as the engine house of NSW, at its centre.
Each work tells a story of the scale, violence and materiality of mining operations. Collectively they convey the enmeshing of historic, mythic, political, economic and material narratives which have shaped Australia’s national ethos and identity. And they invite consideration of one’s own complicity in these extractive processes.
A project by the Global Extraction Observatory, a research collective founded by Dr. Eduardo Kairuz and Dr. Sam Spurr, with collaborators d’Arcy Newberry Dupé and Bader Bud Rizk.
Consultant curator and catalogue author
Bill Lucas: Architect Utopian
Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney
24 February – 26 March 2022
KFive Gallery, Melbourne
19 – 31 August 2022 Presented with the Robyn Boyd Foundation
Photograph: Maja Baska 2022
This exhibition shares the extensive archive of Bill Lucas (1924–2001), revealing the aspirations, ideals and works of one of Sydney’s foremost late 20th century architects. It includes a feast of previously unseen archival drawings, photographs, artworks, private writings and public documents, illustrating his trajectory from conventional to increasingly unconventional practice with projects that were invariably ahead of their time.
The exhibition, put together by architect and friend Peter Lonergan, took inspiration from an application made by Lucas to the Australia Council in which he scripts his life’s achievements. It is presented in three parts; 20 buildings; 10 community projects and 1001 process drawings. He chose material that he found ‘visually interesting’, presented with minimal interpretation, supplemented by a more detailed catalogue.
Team: Cracknell & Lonergan Architects, Graphic Expression, Marilyn Karet, Peter Lucas
Exhibition Advisor and program curator
Photograph: Isabella Moore ©2022
Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age
7 April - 14 May 2022
The exhibition marked just over 75 years since the atomic bombing of the Japanese civilian populations in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki in August 1945. It shows the power of artistic expression to draw attention to the continued threat of nuclear war, unmitigated expansion of nuclear technology, nuclear accidents and the impacts of nuclear testing.
The works cross generations of artists, activists and communities from Japan, Australia and the Pacific. Works include a replica of the Hiroshima Panel ‘Fire’ (1950) by Iri and Toshi Maruki; paintings by women from Yalata, ‘Life Lifted into the Sky’, showing the impact on First Nations people of British nuclear testing at Maralinga, and a photographic series ‘Plant Life (Chernobyl)’ by Merilyn Fairskye.
Exhibition curated by Yasuko Claremont, Paul Brown, Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski, Roman Rosenbaum
Curatorial advisor
Banquet
1 September – 8 October 2022
Photograph: Maja Baska 2022
An exhibition of architectural machines, drawings and performance featuring the work of Marissa Lindquist, Michael Chapman, Timothy Burke, Derren Lowe, Imogen Sage and Robyn Schmidt.
Banquet re-imagined the Tin Sheds Gallery as an interactive banquet hall. Referencing Roman Emperor Nero Germanicus’ Golden Banquet Room - the gallery was transformed into a spatial laboratory exploring food processes and the human condition. Fictional moments in film and literature were re-animated through seven handcrafted analogue ‘food machines’, accompanied by architectural drawings.
The food machines were positioned in the gallery, constructing the various courses of a degustation. Scenes from films such as Wes Anderson’s ‘Grandbudapest Hotel’, an adaptation of George Orwell’s ‘1984’, and Studio Ghibli’s ‘Spirited Away’ were brought to life through the machines. One made a continuous stream of Hors d’oeuvres on a conveyor belt alongside a floating architectural wall, another dispenses dog treats, while another registers the passing of time in coffee production, passing granules through an hourglass allowing the residue to leave marks on paper.
Advisor and catalogue author
Salone del Mobile
22 February – 15 March, 2024
First used by Marcel Duchamp in 1931 the term ‘mobile’ describes the instruments of the American sculptor, Alexander Calder. A French noun; for ‘furnitures,’ or an adjective; ‘darting, nimble or moving,’ when interpreted as a pun it may represent one’s motive or what prompted a crime.
Gathering an array of spatial practitioners operating outside of the traditional design services to construct a hanging apparatus, Salone del Mobile [SYD] challenged preconceptions about the architect’s role, re-imagining how cultural or creative production is established without a building. Curator Gracie Grew invited a group of young practitioners to create a mobile representing their spatial agendas. Participants:
Heidi Axelsen And Hugo Moline
Feral Partnerships
Betchouف
Bangawarra
Jess Spresser + Peter Besley
Interlude
Adjacency Studio
Plus Minus Design
Hill Thalis
Mori
Sophie Lanigan
Self-Office
Tarn
Catseye Bay
Curatorial: Gracie Grew, with Cailtin Condon, Ella Lord, Janelle Woo
Graphic Identity: Eloise Myatt
Advisor