Theme: Reflection (identity)

Location: Level 3

The Humming Room, 2012, is a room in the Gallery manned by a security guard with instructions printed above the door that read: “IN ORDER TO ENTER THE ROOM, YOU MUST HUM A TUNE. ANY TUNE WILL DO.” A freestanding sign next to the entrance tells visitors to “BEGIN HUMMING AS YOU APPROACH THE GUARD.” Each person that enters becomes a performer and part of the artwork. The artwork is never the same for any two people.

Adrian Piper is a conceptual artist and philosopher from New York. In 1967 Piper became an assistant to artist Sol Le Witt, who was a founder of the conceptual art movement. He believed that ideas themselves could be works of art. Both the concept and the art-making process were more important than an art product. Piper has been influenced by Le Witt’s ideas and explores concepts such as racial identity, gender and stereotyping through her work.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

What do you think a Humming Room might be? What might it be for? How do you think you might feel humming a tune in the Gallery space? What might your humming reveal about you? What do you think is the concept or idea behind the work?

DURING YOUR VISIT

As you approach The Humming Room, notice the reactions and responses of other visitors. Hum a tune and enter the space. What tune have you chosen and why? Notice how the artwork affects you before you enter, while you are inside and afterwards. The artist has provided a prompt and a space, the artwork is the experience that is generated. What does your experience reveal to you about yourself? How is this work different to other works you see around you? How important is the presence of the security guard?

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Lara Schnitger I WAS HERE Ground Floor TX1

Lara Schnitger’s I WAS HERE 2019 is another NGV Triennial work that asks us to think about the way we present ourselves to others and how others see us. In what ways do you communicate your ideas and personality?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

If you were to create a conceptual artwork. What ideas might you explore? How would you make them evident in your work and what process could you use to convey them?

Theme: Reflection (identity)

Location: Ground level

Atong Atem was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1994 and migrated to Australia with her family as a small child. Morayo, 2015, is from a series of portraits called the Studio series. The photo has been taken in a photographer’s studio with a carefully chosen model, background, costume, lighting and props. Atem was inspired by African studio photographers Malik Sidibie and Seydou Keita.

Atem created the Studio series with a group of her friends; all young, black African first and second-generation migrants brought up in Australia. They created their own studio setting and posed for the photographs. In the series, African style clothing and textiles are mixed with vintage and modern Western-style clothes, and the subjects of the photographs are surrounded by vibrant pattern and colours that highlight, clash and contrast. By drawing on elements of her personal history and culture, Atong Atem creates images that celebrate identity and individuality.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Consider the things that define your identity – like your culture, your family history, your friends or your interests. What do they say about you? How could you convey those things in an artwork?

DURING YOUR VISIT

Look carefully at Atong Atem’s photographs. How has she used colour, pattern, composition and objects to create interest and highlight her subjects?

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Lakin Ogunbanwo Are we good enough series 2015-17 Ground Level Coles Court

Aïda Muluneh A memory of hope series 2017 Ground Level Coles Court

Compare Atong Atem’s photographs to those of Lakin Ogunbanwo, Aïda Muluneh or other artists nearby. What does each image convey about the subject and the artist? How would you describe each artist’s style?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

Consider the clothes, objects and settings that might describe your family and character.

Look in your family albums and see what details or interesting stories you can discover about your family’s past. Notice the clothing and settings in the photographs. Make a backdrop and setting, dress up and pose to compose your own studio photographs with your friends.

Theme: Speculation

Location: Ground Level

BTVV are a group of architects based in Zurich, Switzerland. In Walls 4 Sale: near new and supersized, 2020, they have built a new apartment inside the Gallery for audiences to explore.

Their apartment contains all of the things you might expect to see in a brand-new apartment – like shiny appliances and clean, modern finishes, but the scale and perspectives of the rooms and fittings have been changed, so things are much bigger or smaller than what you would expect.

Exploring the apartment is an adventure, but the designers also want us to consider how we design and sell spaces for living in.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Look at some advertisements for properties for sale. How have the different features been emphasised to make the property look more appealing? If you had to sell a home, what features would you focus on?

How might what is shown in an advertisement for an apartment or home be different to the experience of living in it?

How might the needs and priorities of the designer, the person investing the money to build the new apartment, and the buyer of a property be different?

DURING YOUR VISIT

This apartment looks clean, new and inviting but what do you think it would be like to actually live in it?

How do the designers use perspective and scale to challenge your expectations?

How do you and other visitors react to different elements of the space? How does being an active part of the work change your experience of it?

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Liam Young Planet City 2020 Ground Level TX2

Liam Young imagines a city of the future. How does his imagined future differ from the environment created by BTVV in Walls 4 Sale: near new and supersized, 2020?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

Now that you have seen the work, how does it change the way you understand at real estate advertisements?

What do you think makes a well-designed home? Create a list of the things that you think are most important – from sustainability to special features.

What do you think would be the alternative approach? Design a living space that puts quality of life first.

Architects are often challenged to create living spaces that fit a lot of features into a small area. Try to design a tiny house. Consider how it might accommodate large numbers of people in a small area.

How do you imagine future living? Draw a design for the apartment of the future – what features will you include?

Theme: Conservation, Illumination

Location: Level 2

Carnovsky is an art design duo comprised of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla, based in Milan, Italy. They experiment with the interaction between printed colours and coloured light, making wallpapers with layers of imagery that appear to change when different coloured light is projected onto them.

For NGV Triennial, Carnovsky have created an RGB (Red Green Blue) wallpaper called Extinctions. It shows the evolution and extinction of different species:

• Extinct species are shown in blue, the layer most difficult to see. These species are just memories, like ghosts.
• Endangered and threatened species – the ones that most need our attention – are shown in red.
• The least vulnerable species are shown in green.

As the coloured filters change, so do the colours of the wallpaper – green becomes red and red, blue – implying that even the creatures not currently under threat are not completely safe. When white light shines, all species are visible, overlapping in a jumble.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Consider some of the problems facing the environment in our time, like rapid urbanisation, industrial agriculture, land clearing, bushfires, pollution and climate change. How are different species affected? Brainstorm ways that artists and designers might draw attention to the different problems.

DURING YOUR VISIT

Look at the species in each colour group of Carnovsky’s wallpaper.

• Which extinct species (blue) do you recognise? What are the factors that might lead to a species going extinct? Why does it matter if species become extinct?
• Which endangered species are shown in red? What might have caused these species to be threatened?
• What responsibility do humans have to other species on the planet? What might we be able to do save other species from extinction?

COMPARE

Fallen Fruit Natural History 2020 Level 1 E14

What connections can you find between Carnovsky’s work and Fallen Fruit’s Natural History? Consider the material and the ideas.

AFTER YOUR VISIT

Research Australian species that are under threat. What is threatening them and what measures are being taken to save them? Find out about the possible impacts of species extinction. For example, some species may have evolved to rely on others.

Try making your own RGB project. Use the Carnovsky RGB lens app² to view your work.

Theme: Illumination

Location: Level 2

Norwegian designer, Cecilie Bendixen blends architecture, craft, art and science to explore and experiment with natural phenomena. She has undertaken research into the ways that textiles can be shaped to absorb sound in architectural spaces.

Bendixen’s installation Cloud Formations, 2020, consists of sculptural cloud forms, which are suspended from the Gallery ceiling. Their shape and colour correspond with clouds in landscape paintings, which are exhibited on walls nearby. Each cloud has been constructed by hand from curled, folded and stitched textiles, and lit from the inside to make it luminous and dreamlike. The fabric clouds change the experience of light and sound in the Gallery space, playing with our expectations of inside and outside, the natural and the artificial.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Consider some of the atmospheric phenomena in nature – like rainbows, wind, clouds and sunlight. What associations do they have for you? What other ideas might they symbolise? For example, a dark cloud might symbolise a bad mood, while a rainbow might symbolise happiness and hope. How could you recreate these phenomena indoors?

DURING YOUR VISIT

• What similarities are there between Cloud Formations and the other artworks in the room? How do they relate to each other?
• What aspects of Bendixen’s work are surprising or interesting? How does the artwork change your experience of the space?

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Jim Shaw Capitol Viscera Appliances mural 2011 Level 2 E16A

Compare Cecilie Bendixen’s cloud forms to the mushroom cloud represented in Jim Shaw’s painting Capitol Viscera Appliances mural, 2011. How many parallels and opposites can you find?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

Find a painting of a landscape or scene that interests you and can construct an element of it in 3D. You might like to try:

• Playing with scale: make a miniature model or choose an element to make life-size or even bigger.
• Bringing the outside inside to make something you would not normally expect to see indoors.

Cecilie Bendixen uses textile forms to change the way things sound in a space. See what you can discover about how sound works and inventions that reduce noise in busy public places.

Theme: Conservation

Location: Ground Level

Dhambit Munuŋgurr is a Yolŋu artist from Yirrkala, a small Aboriginal community in north-eastern Arnhem Land. Munuŋgurr’s works describe the sacred teachings of her parents and the stories of Yolŋu people, plants and animals. Her style is expressive free and shows her deep connection to culture and Country.

A car accident in 2005 left Munuŋgurr with a permanent physical disability that left her unable to grind the ochres (clay earth pigments) used by Yolŋu artists to paint their Country and its stories. Yolŋu grind ochres pigments against a flat stone, mixed with water and glue, then apply them with a marwat (human-hair brush) to single sheets of stringybark. Yolŋu elders gave Munuŋgurr permission to use acrylic paints instead. In 2019 she became the first artist to create blue bark paintings using blue acrylic paint.

Dhambit Munuŋgurr’s installation Can we all have a happy life?, 2019–2020, is made up of 15 bark paintings and nine larrakitj (hollow poles). The work was created at Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, a Yolŋu-owned art centre.

 BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Consider the aspects that combine to create your identity. What stories or traditions have you learned from your family or community? How does your community shape who you are? What traditions and customs does your community have? What are the stories of the places you live and visit?

 DURING YOUR VISIT

Choose one of Dhambit Munuŋgurr’s works from the installation. What is going on in the work? What do you see that makes you say that? Look carefully to see the story being shown and at the different elements of the work. How has Dhambit used line, colour, pattern? What kinds of materials have been used to make the work?

What does the work make you want to find out more about? Read the label for a description of the work. How does it add to your understanding of the work?

 COMPARE

Glenda Nicholls Miwi Milloo (Good Spirit of the Murray River) 2020 Ground Level Foyer

Glenda Nicholls is a Waddi Waddi/Yorta Yorta and Ngarrinjeri woman from Swan Hill in Victoria, who uses traditional weaving techniques to connect to her Country and traditions. Visit the work of Glenda Nicholls near the NGV waterwall on the ground floor. How is Nicholls’ work similar to Dhambit Munuŋgurr’s work? What connections can you find?

 AFTER YOUR VISIT

• Research other examples of bark paintings from Yirrkala. Compare these to Dhambit Munuŋgurr’s work.
• Find out about the traditional custodians of the land where you live or study. What are the stories associated with your place?
• Create an artwork that depicts a story or explains something about where you live from your own experience.

Theme: Illumination

Location: Level 1

Fallen Fruit is a collaborative art project that began in Los Angeles in 2004 by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property. Today Fallen Fruit artists – David Burns and Austin Young – make art installations, public art projects and plant fruit trees in public spaces for everyone to share. Using fruit as a symbol of the abundance of nature, they highlight the stories around fruit – where and how it grows, how it comes to us, how we enjoy it, what it represents and how it is depicted in art and design.

‘Fruit is a universal gift to humanity and fruit is always political.’ David Burns and Austin Young³

For NGV Triennial, Fallen Fruit created a wallpaper called Natural History, 2020. It is displayed as a backdrop to artworks from the NGV Collection which represent the natural world, colonialism, spirituality, religions and ancient mythologies. The wallpaper incorporates images of birds, insects, plants, fruits and flowers which the artists sourced from the NGV Collection and photographs taken around Melbourne including in Cranbourne Gardens, The Collingwood Children’s Farm and the Royal Botanic Gardens. Natural History, 2020 is a colourful and abundant portrait of history, science, culture, politics and personal connections.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Think about fruits you like to eat. Where and how do they grow – are they on a vine, a plant, a tree? Which season do they grow in? Which fruits are native to Australia? What memories or associations do different fruits hold for you? For example, oranges might make you think of half-time at sport or watermelon might remind you of summer. Which other plants do you associate with places or seasons?

DURING YOUR VISIT

Notice your first impression of the Gallery space. Look closely at the wallpaper and the artworks on display. How are they connected?

What unusual or unexpected images can you find in the wallpaper? What connections does the installation highlight that you might not have thought of?

Try to find a fruit or flower for each colour of the rainbow. What about an alphabet of fruit? Apples and Bananas are the easy ones!

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Faye Toogood Downtime: Daylight, Candlelight, Moonlight 2020 Level 2 E23 & E24

British designer Faye Toogood also redesigned a gallery space for the NGV Triennial, combining the NGV Collection works that usually occupy the space with her own art and design.

What feeling does Faye Toogood create? How is it different to Fallen Fruit’s installation? How do the displays influence the way you see the NGV artworks in the installation? What idea might the artists and designers be trying to communicate?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

Draw or paint a picture of your favourite fruit on the plant where it grows. Show the fruit, the flower, the shape of the leaves and the plant in your illustration. Find out where your fruit originates from.

Compose a poem or piece of writing that uses your ‘fruit memory’ as inspiration.

Fallen Fruit artists said that fruit is political. What might they have meant by this? (Consider where different fruits are grown and how we get them)

Cut, paste compose: Introduction to digital collaging

In this workshop, students take inspiration from Fallen Fruit and design their own digital art. They will learn the basics of free editing software to layer and arrange details from their own photographs to make vivid digital designs.
Find out more

Theme: Conservation

Location: Ground Level

Moja Moja Life: Misaki Kawai for Kids, 2020, is an indoor playground featuring sculptures of dogs, with colourful coats made from different fluffy materials. Moja moja is Japanese for ‘shaggy’ or ‘hairy’.

The main feature is Arty, a monumental, goofy dog with a heart-shaped face, big front teeth and a coat of long pink fur that reaches the floor. He looks like a child’s drawing, which has been brought to life on a giant scale. There is also a set of theatre booths and a puppet making studio for children to digitally make and record performances which can be shared with friends and family via social media and email.

The display was designed by artist Misaki Kawai, who was born in Kagawa in Japan and currently lives and works in both America and Japan. Kawai’s artworks belong to a style of art-making called heta-uma or ‘bad but good’ style, that developed in Japan in the 1970s. Heta means ‘bad’, and umai means ‘good’. A heta-uma artwork may initially appear badly drawn or made but has a layer of meaning or some other quality that makes it good. In other words: a good idea with little attention given to technique.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

• What does a great kid’s gallery space look like? Write a list of the elements that would make the ideal kids gallery space and say why you would include them.
• What factors might you have to consider for a kid’s gallery space design? Consider scale, number of visitors, parents, noise and safety, for example.

DURING YOUR VISIT

Write a list of the things you notice in the kid’s space, including the activities and the artworks, like Arty.

• How does the space make you feel? How is it tailored to children and the adults that are with them?
• How are you encouraged to move through the space and engage with the activities?
• How is Arty placed in the space and how do people engage with Arty?
• Find another work in the Triennial exhibition that reminds you of Arty and draw or photograph it. What qualities do they share?

COMPARE

Tomoaki Suzuki Ground Level Murdoch Court

Tomoaki Suzuki is another Japanese artist featured in the Triennial. Compare the work of Tomoaki Suzuki with the work of Misaki Kawai: what qualities do they share and how are they different? How do they both use scale, colour and style? How do they engage the audience?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

• Revisit your ideal kid’s space list from before your visit. What things would you add or change? Draw a design for your ideal kid’s space.
• Inspired by Arty and friends, design a character or puppet to make in 3D using blocks, fabric or modelling materials.
• Draw some friends for your character and write a story that creates an adventure for them all.

Theme: Conservation

Location: Ground Level – Great Hall

Patricia Urquiola is an architect and designer from Oviedo, Spain who currently lives and works in Milan, Italy. Her installation Recycled woollen island, 2020, is specially designed for the NGV Great Hall. Pairs of supersized seats shaped like socks rest on an island of carpet and create a place where visitors can play, relax and enjoy the colours of the Great Hall Ceiling.⁴4

Like real socks, each sock seat is part of a pair that can be separated from its partner. They are embroidered with messages like those on designer or novelty socks. The sock seats have been skilfully handcrafted by artisans using traditional furniture techniques and with felt made from recycled wool.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Discuss the concerns that might influence or impact contemporary designers. They might include materials and technology, the environmental impact of the product at all stages of its life cycle, fashion trends or the client.

What considerations might the Patricia Urquiola have had when thinking of a design for furniture in the NGV Great Hall?

DURING YOUR VISIT

Visit Recycled woollen island. Try out the furniture and observe how other visitors interact with the installation. Does it fulfil the designer’s intention?

COMPARE

Sibling Architecture & Adam Nathaniel Furman Boudoir Babylon 2020 Ground Level Gallery Kitchen

Compare Patricia Urquiola’s installation in the Great Hall with the furniture designed for the Gallery Kitchen café by Sibling Architecture & Adam Nathaniel Furman. How and why is the furniture different?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

All of the materials in these designs are upcycled or recycled. Design a piece of furniture inspired by an item of clothing. Try going through a design process: brainstorm ideas, sketch possibilities, refine one design idea and create a small prototype or model. How would you ensure the design was ecologically positive – that it had a positive effect on the environment?

What materials would you use to create your design in real life?

How could you adapt your design to make it have a smaller environmental impact?

Share your design with someone else – pretend you are doing a pitch to promote your item.

Theme: Conservation

Location: Ground Level

For the NGV Triennial, South African designer Porky Hefer has created Plastocene – Marine Mutants from a disposable world, 2020. Sculptures Buttpuss, Cuetip, Strawfish, Netfish and Cupfish are all part of a series that imagines a future called the Plastocene. Plastic bags and straws, drink bottles and cigarette butts – ocean litter from our society’s high consumption of disposable items and lack of environmental care – have been ‘absorbed’ by a new oceanic super race capable of surviving in the toxic ocean. Hefer’s aquatic mutants show his concern about the state of the earth’s oceans today and suggest a future in which the mutant creatures survive but humans might not.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Consider some of the problems facing the environment, and brainstorm ways that artists and designers might draw attention to each problem.

DURING YOUR VISIT

Look at each of Porky Hefer’s Marine Mutants:

• Which object and which animal has been used to inspire the work?
• What materials have been used to make the work?
• What is the message that Porky Hefer trying to convey?
• What is your response and other visitors’ response to the works? How does this relate to Porky Hefer’s message?

COMPARE

Pirjo Haikola Urchin Corals 2020 Level 3 E26

Talin Hazbar Accretions 2020 Level 3 E26

Erez Nevi Pana Crystalline 2020 Level 3 E26

Look at the work by designers Pirjo Haikola, Talin Hazbar and Erez Nevi Pana to see how designers are exploring ways to use nature to design for the future.

AFTER YOUR VISIT

Porky Hefer combines a problem (pollution) and its impacts (damage to sea creatures and habitat) to create his quirky creature designs. He uses humour to draw attention to an important issue. We relate to his marine mutants because they are funny and because they offer a playful place to sit, but they also make us focus on the serious impact of our behaviour on the environment.

Find out more about ocean pollution and what is being done to fix it.

Design your own mutant creature that combines a common waste item and a sea creature.

Theme: Illumination, Conservation

Location: Level 2 E15 A

British designer Stuart Haygarth creates lighting designs, sculptures and installations that present everyday things in a way that gives them new life and beauty. Discarded items – from man-made debris washed up on the seashore, to carefully collected objects made of plastic or glass – are salvaged and repurposed with order, value and meaning.

Optical (tinted), 2009, is a sparkling, sphere of glass fragments, which is suspended from the ceiling. It is lit from the centre and sparkles like a disco ball, scattering light onto the surfaces around it. A close look reveals that it is made from prescription optical lenses: Haygarth reclaimed over 4500 clear and tinted lenses to create the ball, which measures 1.5 m in diameter.

‘My main interest is the human association to the objects and the story they tell. My goal is to give the objects a new life and for the viewer to interpret them in a different way. I also seem compelled to create order from the chaos.’ Stuart Haygarth⁵

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Consider the materials artists might use to make their work.

• What gives materials their value?
• What might make a material suitable for use in an artwork?
• How might an artist alter our perception of the value of materials?
• How might the materials used in an artwork add to its meaning?

 DURING YOUR VISIT

• What are your first impressions of Optical (tinted)? How do your perceptions of change as you get closer to the work?
• What has been used to make the work? Why might the artist have chosen those materials?
• What is the idea behind the work? How do the materials add to the meaning or idea of the work?
• How does the Optical (tinted) affect the space around it?
• What problems or challenges might the work have involved in its creation?

COMPARE

Sabine Marcelis Dawn XXXIII Level 2 E15 B

Sabine Marcelis’ Dawn XXXIII 2015 is another work that uses light. What other features does it share with Optical (tinted) 2009? In what ways is it different?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

• Find other examples of Stuart Haygarth’s work to see how Optical (tinted) relates to his other pieces.
• Consider objects or materials that you could collect to make an artwork – think of categories to organise your collecting: colour, material type, shape, theme. What ideas or stories do the objects communicate? What are the properties of the materials and how could they be utilised? For example, glass lets the light through, bright colours are joyful.
• Collect a category of objects and use them to create an artwork. What story might the objects tell if they could speak?
• Stuart Haygarth uses his art to draw attention to issues of pollution, consumption and recycling. Do you think artists have a responsibility to make art about important issues? Explain your answer.

Theme: Reflection

Location: Ground level

Tomoaki Suzuki is a Japanese artist who lives and works in London, England. Using traditional Japanese woodcarving techniques and acrylic paint, Suzuki creates miniature portraits of friends and acquaintances from his neighbourhood. The figures include intricate details like jewellery, tattoos, clothing and makeup to reflect their subject’s distinctive style. Their lifelike detail makes them seem very human.

Each figure takes months to create: Suzuki begins by photographing his subjects in his studio over a series of visits. He then glues photographic images to a wooden block and uses them to help carve the initial form of the figure. Using progressively finer tools, he creates increasingly greater detail until finally, he completes the works with paint.

Ten of Suzuki’s tiny figures are installed on the floor throughout the Gallery space. Each one is named after the model that inspired it, like Carson, 2009, Joy, 2010, or Kadeem and Kyrone, 2014. Since the sculptures are roughly a third of human size, viewers move among them like giants and have to bend down to take a closer look. They make the viewer perceive their own size in a different way.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

Find out more about traditional Japanese woodcarving to learn about the tools, processes and the kinds of works that they were used for.

Watch the video below for an introduction to the artwork with an NGV educator.

DURING YOUR VISIT

Walk around Tomoaki Suzuki’s sculptures and notice how they are placed in the room.

• Observe people’s reactions to them. How might the reaction differ if they were a different scale – for example, life-size or larger than life?
• Choose one of the figures that appeals to you and draw or photograph it.
• Consider the idea or message behind the work. What do Tomoaki Suzuki’s little figures communicate to you?

COMPARE

Kengo Kuma & Associates with Geoffrey Nees Botanical Pavilion 2020 Level 1 E11 

• What is the viewpoint of the audience in each work and how is it important?
• Compare the materials used in each work. How are the qualities of the materials utilised by each artist? How are they important? How do they affect the experience of the work?

AFTER YOUR VISIT

• Write a profile describing the figure you chose in the exhibition. What is the person called, how old are they? What do they look like? What are their interests? What are their hopes? What are the strengths and flaws of their character?
• Create a portrait sculpture of someone you know using modelling clay or by carving a soft material like soap or plaster. Begin by drawing them from the front, the side and the back. Try to capture their character through their pose, clothing and hairstyle.