Exhibitions

Made for this World

Made for this World:
Contemporary Art and the Places We Build

26 November 2005 – 19 February 2006

‘Made for this World’ will have children looking twice at the many familiar places around them. Through contemporary art works from the Gallery’s Collection, children can go inside different homes and venture outside to discover the inbuilt creativity of our built environment. There are plenty of hands-on opportunities in the exhibition with major artist interactives. Kids can create a Lego city, build a bridge and even cover furniture and walls with colourful dots.

With easy-to-read labels, an activity book and the exhibition mascot Kitty Cat the Alley Cat leading the way, prowl through the Gallery spaces this summer and explore art that has been made for this world!

Exhibition Themes

‘Made for this World’ explores three themes — ‘Home Sweet Home’, ‘Around My Town’, and ‘Under Construction’.

Home Sweet Home

Where do you live? For many people their home is at the centre of the built environment. We decorate the interiors of our homes and arrange the furnishings to reflect things such as our personality and culture. From posters stuck on walls to the knick-knacks displayed on bookshelves, everything in someone’s home reveals something about them. The artists in ‘Home Sweet Home’ recognise that the home means much more to us than just a roof over our heads.

Around My Town

By taking a close look at the pattern of a street map or the reflections in shop windows we can discover new ways of looking at familiar places. The artists in this section take us around their town to discover the many ways that the city can be turned into an imaginative new world. Many of the artists work with the materials, architectural elements and visual patterns of the built environment to stimulate our thoughts and emotional responses to the places we live.

Under Construction

Children love to build and make objects. From toys to train sets, and building blocks to dollhouses, construction and the urban landscape are familiar settings for children. Within the exhibition, several major artist-developed interactives invite children to experience the making of the built environment.

Interactives

Yayoi Kusama’s ‘The obliteration room 2002’ invites kids to obliterate the completely white surfaces of a life-sized Australian living room, re-created within the Gallery, with coloured dots. Children can also access the online version with Kusama’s World of Dots, where Kusama’s dots don’t always behave as expected! Olafur Eliasson’s The cubic structural evolution project 2004 puts the construction of a city into children’s hands! With thousands of pieces, the task is to create and re-create an ever-evolving metropolis.APT3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s Bridge crossing 1999 is another hands-on challenge — to create a bridge, as simple or complex as children’s imaginations require, using small pieces of bamboo and tape.

Interactive for Kids!

Coinciding with ‘Made for this World’, the Gallery launches an online interactive based on exhibiting artist Yayoi Kusama’s fascination with dots. Click to play!