Theme: Speculation

Topics: Design, Human Experience

Location: Gallery Kitchen, Ground Floor

Boudoir Babylon, 2020, is an immersive and flamboyant space celebrating queer aesthetics and culture. Adam Nathaniel Furman and Sibling Architects have transformed NGV’s Gallery Kitchen by drawing inspiration from three types of places for social gathering – the boudoir, the salon and the club. Historically, in locations like these, women, queer, gender diverse people and those with differing political views or religious beliefs could exist, express their identities freely and thrive. Colour, lighting, spatial dividers, screens, baffles, catwalks, décor and oculi proudly celebrate the project’s aims: Boudoir Babylon welcomes all people, particularly the LGBTQ+ community, seeking spaces of difference and safety.

‘My designs are always approachable and often cheeky and take inspiration from a passionate and lifelong exploration of the themes of Queerness, colour and ornament.’² -Adam Nathaniel Furman.

Guiding Questions

Experiencing the space

• What do you see as you immerse yourself in the space? How do the aesthetics make you feel?
• Note elements of Boudoir Babylon’s design: the overall space, lighting, colour palette, furniture, forms and other considerations. Draw quick sketches of several.
• Where would you choose to sit and why?
• Furman, Sibling Architects and NGV curators have described the space using words and phrases such as ‘cheeky’, ‘approachable’, ‘technicoloured’ and ‘delicious edible forms’. Build a list of striking words describing this installation with your classmates.

The design

• How is the space different from a typical café?
• How does the space welcome and offer safety to the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalised people?
• How does the space influence the way people gather and socialise?
• The design brief included the potential for an Instagram moment. Suggest why this is an important contemporary consideration.

Connections

You might also like to explore:

• Bosshard, Tavor, van der Ploeg, and Ani Vihervaara (BTVV)Walls 4 Sale: near new and supersized Ground Floor Murdoch Court
• Misaki Kawai Moja Moja Life Ground Floor E8
• Lara Schnitger House of heroines Ground Floor TX1

Theme: Speculation

Topics: Sustainability, Design, Environmentalism

Location: Level 3 E26

Alice Potts has spent the last six years as a biofabricator, developing a combination of sustainable and biology-based materials. For the NGV Triennial, Potts has created a set of twenty pieces of personal protection equipment (PPE) designed for a post-COVID dance party, made with bioplastics. Her Dance Biodegradable Personal Protective Equipment (DBPPE) Post COVID facemasks, 2020, are each made from food waste and dyed using flowers collected in London’s parks and gardens during the COVID19 lockdown. These pieces were inspired by the story of her brother, a paramedic working in the outskirts of London, who resorted to using bin liners as facemasks due to the lack of PPE. Concerned about limited PPE supplies, Potts produced thousands of reusable cotton masks in a not-for-profit initiative.

Drawing on this experience, and her ongoing investigation into biodesign, Potts’ work highlights the acceleration of single-use plastics for COVID-19-related PPE. Through the bioplastic pieces in this collection, Potts considers the ways new sustainable production methods can both protect communities and positively affect the environment.

Guiding Questions

The pieces

• Compare Potts’ biodegradable bioplastic face shields with those produced from regular plastic. How are they similar or different?
• Do you find these face shields appealing? Would you wear one? What is influencing your response?
• Look closely at the various pieces in this collection, taking note of the organic materials used to produce each one. How do the individual materials contribute to the aesthetic qualities of the shields? Which materials appear to leave a more prominent mark in the surface of the bioplastic?

Themes and ideas

• How does Potts’ work challenge current attitudes towards the production, use and disposal of single-use products such as PPE?
• What does the work say about the role of art and design in influencing and shaping a sustainable future?
• How does the open-source element of the mask – the frame – change the future of the way we design and make objects?
• Potts is widely recognised for her ‘sweat crystallisation’ works that turn human sweat into a biocrystal for use in art and design projects. While she originally intended to produce works of this variety for Triennial 2020, Potts needed to change direction and modify her plans due to the consequences of COVID-19. What adaptions and modifications have you made to your lifestyle over the past year in response to COVID-19? Which ones do you hope to maintain in the future?

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Scotty So China masks Ground Floor Murdoch Court
• Stuart Haygarth Optical (tinted), Level 2 E15 A
• Erez Nevi Pana, Crystalline Level 3 E26
• Lukas Wegwerth Crystallization 152 Level 3 E26
• Pirjo Haikola Urchin corals Level 3 E26

Alicja Kwade’s work investigates concepts of space, time, science and philosophy, in the form of sculptural objects, public installations, video and photography. Her work WeltenLinie, 2020, is a large-scale installation consisting of double-sided mirrors, carefully placed paired objects and steel frames. As visitors walk through the structure, the work comes to life – becoming more of an experience than a static installation. Full of illusions of unexpected material transformations, in some places, mirrors cleverly conceal parts of objects, yet in others, they appear to complete them. With each step, twist and turn, visitors are challenged to discern what is real and what is a reflection. Moving within Kwade’s steel-framed structure requires the visitor to constantly view the objects within it with an expectation that they will change just as their position and perspective shifts.

Guiding questions

The installation

• Stand at the entrance to WeltenLinie and describe the general layout of the installation. What size and shape is the structure? How many kinds of materials can you see? Where are they, and how have they been arranged?
• Imagine the processes involved in creating WeltenLinie and installing the objects within it. What is the artist’s intention with this work? What considerations did the artist need to make to achieve the desired effects? What do you think were the most challenging parts of constructing the installation?
• How does your perception of the objects, people and reflections in the installation change as you walk through it? What feelings and responses do these changes in perception evoke?

Themes and ideas

• Does perception equal reality? Just because we think something is real, is it in fact, reality? Discuss these questions with others in your class or group in relation to WeltenLinie.
• What constitutes ‘real’? Do you consider the objects, formed and transformed by reflections, to be real? Are they any more or less real than the whole objects themselves? Explain your answer

Connections

You might also like to explore:

• Faye Toogood Downtime: Daylight, Candlelight, Moonlight Level 2 E23 & E24
• Kengo Kuma & Associates, Tokyo and Paris (architecture studio) Kengo Kuma (designer) with Geoff Nees (artist) Botanical Pavilion and Lee Ufan Dialogue Level 1 E11
• Guido Casaretto As far as I recall / I–II and As far as I recall / III–IV Level 3 E28

Theme: Reflection

Topics: Identity, Culture, Human Experience

Location: Level 2 E22 C

Angela Tiatia is a new media artist of Samoan and Australian heritage. She explores contemporary culture, drawing attention to its relationship to representation, identity, gender, cultural displacement and the body. In many video works, Tiatia uses her own body to confront gender stereotyping or to address global issues such as climate change. She often references popular culture, history, literature, and classical and contemporary art.

Narcissus, 2019, is a video work that reimagines the ancient Greco-Roman myth of Narcissus, in which a beautiful young man falls in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Tiatia references sources such as the 1597–99 canvas by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Mat Collishaw’s Narcissus 1990, a photographic self-portrait.

Tiatia uses the story of Narcissus to reflect on global selfie culture in the age of social media. In contrast to the original myth, the work features not one but 40 Narcissi. They occupy a single platform, jostling and struggling among themselves in a display of various self-absorbed acts. Towards the end, Narcissus and several others are consumed by their desires and lost to the watery abyss.

Guiding questions

The art-making process

• Angela is a video artist. List the advantages and disadvantages of video over a static work such as a photograph or painting.
• Imagine how Tiatia made Narcissus 2019. Discuss key steps and the many collaborations.
• Why do you think the artist decided to play the footage in slow motion? What are the effects and impacts of this decision?

Themes and ideas

• Tiatia reimagines the Narcissus myth, which warns against the dangers of self-obsession, into a metaphor of contemporary social media culture and its preoccupation with the self. Discuss the role that social media plays in this context.
• How successful is Tiatia’s video work in communicating this issue and its effect on contemporary life?
• What other ancient narratives do you think could be reimagined to stir a contemporary audience?

The artist’s references

The art-making process

• Research Caravaggio and Mat Collinshaw’s interpretations of Narcissus. How has Tiatia taken inspiration from these works?
• What do you think Tiatia found interesting about them?
• How are they similar or different from Tiatia’s work?

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Jeff Koons Venus Ground Floor TX1
• Diamond Stingily In the middle but in the corner of 176th place Ground Floor TX3

Theme: Speculation

Topics: Design, Shaping the Future

Location: Ground Level Murdoch Court

Walls 4 Sale: near new and supersized, 2020, is an unfurnished contemporary apartment built inside the Gallery. At first, the clean, plain finish and layout of the apartment looks familiar, like a real estate advertisement. But inside, dimension, depth and perspective have all been distorted as they are in real estate photography for adverts. The scale of the spaces and fittings has been manipulated to make visitors feel too big or too small. As they walk through the apartment, visitors have to reach up for handles and benchtops or bend down to fit in a room. Exploring the apartment is like an Alice in Wonderland adventure in which the visitor is surprised by the unexpected changes in scale.

ETH Architects Alessandro Bosshard, Li Tavor, Matthew van der Ploeg and Ani Vihervaara are criticising the architectural images and real estate photographs used to sell low-quality apartments to potentially unsuspecting buyers or tenants. They noticed that most of the new apartments had the same features – white walls, polished wooden floors and ‘coveted’ appliances, fittings and finishes – and were photographed at angles that made spaces look bigger or more appealing. A selection of these apartment images from Melbourne was compiled to create their impossible apartment installation.

Guiding questions

The installation

• Consider what strategies and tricks might be used to sell low-quality real estate such as drawing attention to a ‘feature’ when the overall architecture is substandard. What does the artwork make you think about how we build and sell apartments as investments or to live in?
• Investigate the different spaces in Walls 4 Sale: near new and supersized. How is this artwork different from a traditional work of art? How does exploring and being a part of the artwork change your experience of it? Which areas are surprising or unusual?

Themes and ideas

• In many cases, real estate is more motivated by making money than providing good spaces for living in. Try to list the different ways you see real estate being marketed and sold in questionable ways.
• What do you think are the attributes of a well-designed home? Create a list of priorities that consider spatial, ecological and social aspects.

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Liam Young Planet City 2020 Ground Floor TX2
• Kengo Kuma & Associates with Geoffrey Nees Botanical Pavilion 2020 Level 1 E11

Theme: Reflection

Topics:Identity, Culture, Human Experience

Location:Ground Floor TX3

Diamond Stingily is an American artist, writer and poet. Working across video, sculpture and installation, Stingily uses ready-made materials and objects to create works that reflect on race, identity and gender. Her practice draws heavily upon memory, childhood and her own personal experiences.

In the middle but in the corner of 176th place, 2020, is an installation of more than seven hundred athletic trophies displayed on metal shelving. The work references Stingily’s childhood memories of growing up in a family of athletes and participating in team sports in suburban West Chicago. At first glance, the trophies look like those typically given to participants of conventional competitions at awards ceremonies. A closer look reveals that their plaques are replaced by short passages such as ‘I DID THE BEST I COULD WITH WHAT I HAD’ or ‘I DID IT FOR THE GLORY’. Collectively, these trophies comment on the nature of human endeavour and our obsessions with competition, triumph and failure.

Guiding questions

The artwork

• What is the significance of the title of this artwork?
• Consider the relationship between the form of Diamond Stingily’s trophies and the messages etched onto their plaques. How do they complement and/or contradict one another?
• How does the number of trophies in this display affect your response to the work overall?
• How might the meanings and messages expressed in the installation be interpreted differently if there were far fewer trophies?

Themes and ideas

• In what ways does this artwork celebrate our culture of awarding achievement and effort in competition? In what ways does it challenge it?
• What kind of trophy would you like to award yourself right now? What kind of message would you engrave into its plaque?

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Lara Schnitger I was here Ground Floor TX1
• Atong Atem Adut, Adut and Bigoa, Akuot, Morayo and Paanda Ground Floor TX1
• Tomoaki Suzuki Ground Floor Murdoch Court
• Alessandro Bosshard, Li Tavor, Matthew van der Ploeg and Ani Vihervaara House Tour Ground Floor Murdoch Court

Small victories trophy workshop

Celebrate small victories and everyday wins by designing a trophy for a friend, family member or yourself with this workshop resource.
Find out more

Theme: Speculation

Topics: Identity, Culture, Knowledge

Location:Level 3 E27

Hannah Brontë is a Wakka Wakka and Yaegel artist based in Brisbane. She is a practising visual artist whose music videos, banners and large-scale installations explore the role of Indigenous/Blak women through themes of resilience, matriarchy and power.

HEAR U MAGIK, 2020, is a video work that explores the notion of ancestral knowledge passed down from generation to generation. This deeper sense of perception is sometimes referred to as ‘the knowing’ or ‘illpunja’. In developing this work, Brontë drew on the concept of female Indigenous intuition and an innate ability to listen to the land, the weather and the elements. Referencing the social and personal impacts of the loss of this intuitive knowledge in the wake of colonisation, Brontë writes, ‘This has been violently taken from many of our people and so it becomes muddled.’

The video work is displayed within an immersive sculptural installation. Visitors enter a room-sized eye, which has been edged with glowing woven lashes, and tune into the video’s protagonist who articulates the internal voice of women’s intuition.

Guiding questions

Video and installation

• What kind of moods or feelings does the immersive space evoke as you enter it?
• What do you think is the symbolic significance of the eye and the way it has been used to shape the space?
• Describe the relationship between the space and the video work. In what ways does the immersive space help to communicate and enhance the meanings and messages within EYE HEAR U MAGIK?

Themes and ideas

• How does the protagonist in EYE HEAR U MAGIK use language to encourage viewers to better understand and connect with intuitive knowledge?
• How do the visuals speak to Brontë’s idea of trans-generational knowing or illpunja?
• Have you ever made a decision based on an intuitive gut feeling? What did you experience at the time? Research the reasons we experience physical sensations when we respond to something intuitively.

Connections

You might also like to explore

• JR Homily to Country, Ground Floor Arbour
• Atong Atem Adut, Adut and Bigoa, Akuot, Morayo and Paanda Ground Floor TX1
• Dhambit Mununggurr Can we all have a happy life? Ground Level TX2
• Angela Tiatia Narcissus Level 2 E22 C

New York-based artist Jeff Koons is considered one of the most influential, popular and controversial artists in modern times. He is widely recognised for works dealing with popular culture, and sculptures produced with stainless steel reflective surfaces.

Venus, 2016–20, is part of Koons’ Porcelain series, which contrasts classical principles of beauty with sophisticated contemporary production technologies and aesthetics. This larger than life sculpture is based on a much smaller eighteenth-century figurine of the same name by Wilhelm Christian Meyer. While the original is made from porcelain, Koons’ Venus is produced with brightly coloured mirror-polished stainless steel. Mirrors and reflection feature frequently throughout Koons’ practice for both aesthetic reasons and its ability to intimately involve the viewer within the work.

‘To reflect is an inward process, but also an outward process. The use of reflective surfaces was to connect the work to philosophy and the experience of becoming. And that we not only have our internal life, but we also have the external world – this interaction is what gives us a future. Reflections tell the viewer that nothing is ever happening without them. Art happens inside them.’³ -Jeff Koons

Guiding questions

The artwork

• Describe the surface quality of Venus and the effect it achieves. What does the mirror-polished finish remind you of?
• How do you respond to seeing your reflection in Venus? How do you notice other viewers responding to the work? Do you think this is how Jeff Koons expected audiences to view and respond to Venus? Why or why not?

The artist’s references

• Compare Koons’ Venus to the figurine upon which it is based. In what ways is this work an appropriation of a porcelain object and in what ways is it an original artwork.
• The original version of this sculpture was much smaller. Why do you think Jeff Koons has chosen to enlarge it in his version? How does the scale of this sculpture affect the way you view it?
• What does Koons’ interpretation of Venus say about the audience for which it was made? How might this differ from the intended audience of Meyer’s original figurine, produced in the eighteenth century?

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Tony Matteli Hera (bronze) Ground Floor Terrace
• Diamond Stingily In the middle but in the corner of 176th place Ground Floor TX3
• Kengo Kuma & Associates, Tokyo and Paris (architecture studio) Kengo Kuma (designer) with Geoff Nees (artist) Botanical Pavilion and Lee Ufan Dialogue Level 1 E11
• Angela Tiatia Narcissus Level 2 E22 C

Theme: Conservation

Topics: Environmentalism, Sustainability, Human Activity

Location: Ground Floor, Arbour

JR is an anonymous French photographer and street artist who is internationally renowned for pasting giant, monochrome photographs of unnamed people in public places. Combining art and action, JR’s work often comments on international politics, environmental issues, urban identity and self-expression. From Parisian suburbs to Brazilian slums, his freely exhibited installations readily catch the attention of the general public, including people who are not usually museum visitors. JR aims to challenge those who view artworks to develop their own interpretations of what they see by leaving the works and the spaces they inhabit unexplained.

Homily to Country, 2020, draws attention to the Darling River system’s ecological decline caused by intensive water extraction due to irrigation, climate change and drought. JR is interested in the plight of farmers and the tensions that often exist between Indigenous peoples, ‘family farms’ and multinational agribusinesses. The artwork has two key elements:

1. A film comprised of documentary footage, including that of the artist’s field research, and portrait photography. 
2. An architectural scale installation envisaged as an open-air chapel decorated with large stained-glass window depicting the portraits of two orchardists, who were forced to destroy their families’ orchard farms due to lack of irrigation, and the senior Indigenous spokesperson for the Darling River (Baaka). 

Guiding questions

The artform

• Film, performance and installation are used to convey JR’s message about the significant social and environmental issues. Discuss why he uses several mediums for this artwork and how each adds to his key ideas.
• Explain how and where JR employs scale. What effect does his use of scale create?
• Stained-glass windows have traditionally been used as architectural features in sacred places such as churches and chapels to teach and inspire. How does JR’s use of this medium inform his message?
• Tim Flannery’s exhibition catalogue essay notes ‘The great conundrum facing the people of the river, which JR has captured in his installation, is how they are to fairly share a dwindling resource’.⁴ Explain how the artwork illustrates this.

The artist’s practice

• From his beginnings as a teenage graffiti artist in Paris to an internationally renowned contemporary artist, JR focuses on issues that significantly impact many people. What tools has he used to create an impact?
• JR has displayed his artworks in diverse places such as a maximum-security prison, the Pantheon in Paris, a container ship, the US-Mexico border fence and the Darling River system/Baaka. Discuss the implications of displaying Homily to Country at the NGV. What impact might this have on the work of art?
• JR prefers to remain anonymous. Explain why you think this is important for him.

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Glenda Nicholls Miwi Milloo (Good Spirit of the Murray River) Ground Floor Foyer
• Tromarama Solaris Level 2 E16C
• Hannah Brontë EYE HEAR U MAGIK Level 3 E27

Theme: Illumination

Topics: Philosophy, Enlightenment

Location: Level 1 E 11

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma collaborated with Melbourne artist Geoff Nees to create Botanical pavilion, a new architectural installation that responds to the philosophical nature of Korean artist Lee Ufan’s painting Dialogue, 2017. Audiences are invited to journey through the gallery-scale circular pavilion’s acoustic and sensory path to view and contemplate Ufan’s painting.

Made in the Japanese tradition of wooden architecture, the Botanical pavilion features a tessellated interior lined with timber collected from trees felled or removed over several years at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Some of these trees pre-date European colonisation. The botanical species used in the installation have been ordered according to colour rather scientific classification in an acknowledgement of Indigenous cultural beliefs and knowledge systems.

Kuma’s goal is to design architecture that respects its natural surroundings instead of dominating them, with a focus on utilising new materials and technologies to recover the traditions of Japanese architecture. His team is constantly in search of new materials to transform the ‘era of concrete and steel’ into the ‘era of wood and timber’. His designs are often constructed from cedar and feature timber slats referred to as louvres.

Guiding questions

• Research historical works of Japanese architecture. What aesthetic, philosophical and structural principles characterise it? How might these relate to Botanical pavilion?
• The wood has been organised by colour, rather than by scientific categories. Why do you think the artist might have done this? How might it relate to Indigenous knowledge systems?

Please refer to the Lee Ufan – Dialogue card for further questions to use with this work.

Lee Ufan (李禹煥), born in Korea in 1936, is a painter, sculptor, writer and philosopher based in Japan. Ufan emerged in the late 1960s in Japan as a major proponent of the pioneering Mono-ha group. Meaning ‘School of Things’, Mono-ha challenges ideas of making traditional, representational artworks (such as landscapes or still life) and gives emphasis to raw, natural and industrial materials and their native properties. The Mono-ha movement asks that the artwork be considered together with the viewer and the space between them and the artwork, that the interconnected nature of this relationship is where Mono-ha art in fact resides.

Ufan painted Dialogue to the rhythm of his own breathing in an act of intense concentration. The work features a singular sweep of paint built up over an extended time period through an accumulation of smaller strokes. The brushstrokes can be compared to the simple repetition of Zen meditation which clears the mind of distracting thoughts and material concerns. The single brushstroke and its power to represent everything, and yet nothing, has been a central theme in Ufan’s career.

Dialogue prompts us to consider our place in a bigger context, and our relationship with what is around us. For the artist, the work is not the object itself but the space it creates. Together, Botanical pavilion and Dialogue offer a site for contemplation, reminding us of our relationships to nature and one another.

Guiding questions

The artwork

• Experience the space, the objects that occupy it, sounds, light and shadows. What does this make you think, feel and wonder?
• Study the painting and the installation in the space separately. Which elements and principles of art stand out? How were they made and what materials and techniques were used?
• What is similar between Botanical pavilion and Dialogue?
• How does the soundscape add to the artwork? If it was not included, would it significantly affect the experience and its meaning?

Themes and ideas

• Lee Ufan was born in Korea and Kengu Kuma was born in Japan, which is where both artists are currently based. Reflecting on your experience of the artworks and reading the label information, consider how their personal and cultural backgrounds are evident in their works.
• Wayne Crothers, NGV Senior Curator of Asian Art, notes the spiritual connections between Japanese Shintoism and Aboriginal understanding of nature. Both see the world in a profound and deeply respectful way. Consider some of the profound ideas in this installation. What meanings and messages strike you?
• Spend five minutes trying a breathing meditation in front of Ufan’s work. With your eyes looking at the artwork, focus only on your breathing. How does it make you feel?

Connections

You might also like to explore

• Jeff Koons Venus Ground Floor TX1
• Faye Toogood Level 2 E23 & 24
• Makiko Ryujin and Michael Gittings Samsara Level 1 Tea Room

Theme: Speculation

Topics: Shaping the Future, Digital technologies, Sustainability

Location: Ground Level TX2

Liam Young is an Australian born BAFTA-nominated film director and speculative architect who operates in the spaces between critical design, fiction and futures. He is interested in visualising the possibilities of future urban environments based on the realities of the present.

Planet City, 2020, is a 15-minute 3D animated film. It premises that we are living in a geological period known as the Anthropocene, in which humans are the dominant force shaping the planet. The work presents a speculation of what might happen if we drastically reverse urban sprawl and relocate the entire world’s population into a single city, returning the rest of the Earth to wilderness. Faced with the realities of climate change, ecosystem collapse and other moral challenges ahead for humanity, Young’s Planet City challenges the notion that human needs outweigh those of ecosystems and other species.

Guiding questions

The artform

• Describe the look and feel of Liam Young’s video. How are the work’s messages and meanings conveyed through this aesthetic?
• How does the presentation of the artwork influence and impact our understanding of the video’s content?

Themes and ideas

• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of condensing the world’s population into one city from social-cultural, environmental, economic and political perspectives.
• Speculative architecture can create imaginary worlds in which to visualise and test possibilities and examine our hopes and fears. In what ways does Planet City incite the hopes and fears that humanity might hold towards the future of life on Earth?
• How effective is Planet City at urging us to examine the environmental questions and issues we are facing today?

Connections

You might also like to explore

• • Refik Anadol Quantum memories Ground Floor Federation Court
  • Carnovsky Extinctions Level 2 E20
  • Tromarama Solaris Level 2 E16C
  • Tabor Robak Megafauna Level 3 E29

Theme: Conservation

Topics: Environmentalism, Sustainability, Design Technology

Location: Level 3 E26

Dr Pirjo Haikola is a designer, researcher and SCUBA diving instructor who has witnessed underwater environmental problems firsthand. As a result, she has collaborated with scientists to investigate how design can contribute to the regeneration of marine ecosystems and create awareness of marine problems.

Globally, coastal areas are suffering from an explosive growth in numbers of sea urchins caused by steady rises in ocean temperatures and changing nutrient levels. Herds of relentlessly grazing sea urchins are capable of reducing kelp forests to wastelands. The loss of these underwater sanctuaries is a major threat to the survival of many marine species and habitats.

Coral is an important part of reef restoration efforts, but it competes for space with seaweed. Urchin Corals, 2020, presents 3D printed coral structures using a material developed from the shells and spikes of sea urchins blended with biopolymers. The new sea urchin material reduces the growth of seaweed underwater, giving corals an early advantage. If successful, large quantities of artificial coral structures could be manufactured to support restoration efforts in Port Phillip Bay and across Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The corals are accompanied by an underwater film that shows Haikola diving in Port Phillip Bay, providing context for the objects and the marine ecosystem problems the project addresses.

Guiding questions

The work

• Consider the pairing of Haikola’s 3D printed objects with the accompanying video footage. How does this combination of products help communicate meaning?
• Explain how the materials used for Urchin Corals are significant for finding a solution to the sea urchin problem.
• Urchin Corals has been included in NGV Triennial in the exhibition theme of Conservation. What do you think the theme is about? Why do you think the curators chose to include the work as part of this theme?

The designer

• Haikola’s work is the result of bringing together two passions, design and the underwater world experienced through diving. Debate the place of passion in the working life of a designer.
• Haikola continues to collaborate with a range of experts across many organisations. List the benefits of working in this way.

Connections

You might also like to explore

• • Alice Potts Level 3 E26
  • Erez Nevi Pana Crystalline Level 3 E26
  • Lukas Wegwerth Crystallization 152 Level 3 E26

Theme: Speculation

Topics: Shaping the Future, Design Technologies, Human Experience

Location: Ground level – Federation Court

Refik Anadol is a Turkish born new media artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His work uses complex big data and advanced computer technology to create artworks that explore the meeting point of our physical and digital worlds. 

Refik Andaol’s Quantum memories, 2020, draws upon a dataset of more than two hundred million nature-related images from the internet, which are processed using quantum computing software developed by the Google AI Quantum research team in combination with an exceptionally fast supercomputer that has been programmed with machine learning algorithms. The resulting real-time video can be considered both an alternate dimension of the natural world and a radical visualisation of our digitised memories of nature. 

The arresting visuals and accompanying audio are composed in collaboration with a generative algorithm enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing – a new form of computing that exploits the unusual physics of the subatomic world – turning the visual data that flows around us every day into an artwork that represents our collective memory of nature and introducing fictitious landscapes invented by the AI. 

Through the work, the artist encourages us to imagine the potential of this experimental computer technology and the immense opportunities it presents for the future of art and design.

Guiding questions 

The artwork 

• Consider the sensation of standing before an artwork on this huge scale that is constantly moving and reforming. What is the impact of the scale and movement on the viewer? 
• What materials and techniques have been used to make this work? How do the materials and techniques correspond to the idea that the artist Refik Anadol is pursuing? 

Themes and ideas 

• How does this work relate to the time in which we live? 
• What other possible collaborations between artists and AI can you imagine? 
• Which of the other exhibition themes of Conservation, Reflection and Illumination could this work connect to and how? 

Connections 

You might also like to explore 

• Liam Young Planet City Ground Floor TX2 
• Tromarama Solaris Level 2 E16C 

Theme: Speculation

Topics: Design Technologies. Philosophy

Location: Level 3 E29

Tabor Robak is a digital artist and programmer who has been creating computer graphics since childhood. He uses computer game technology (e.g. Photoshop, CINEMA 4D and Unity) to create visually engaging and high-resolution artworks. Robak examines the relationship between humanity, nature and technology, often blurring the lines of real and artificial. 

Megafauna, 2020, is an immersive installation that takes over the entire gallery space. It features a group of computer-generated animations that surround the viewer on video screens and projections. On the screens, twelve highly detailed digital sculptures – called Magi – glow in the darkened space like religious altars. On the floor, a digital projection constantly generates new patterns. 

The imagery in the work is visually derived from sacred iconography and the industries from which AI is likely to emerge (military research, high–frequency trading and surveillance technologies, among others). Simple shapes have been combined and animated to suggest abstract forms that blend the organic and the machine. Through these futuristic organisms, Robak explores the ethical and philosophical consequences of our relationship with technology and how it shapes society. 

Guiding questions 

The artwork 

• What are your first reactions, thoughts and feelings towards Megafauna? 
• Define the terms ‘megafauna’ and ‘Magi’. Why are they significant to this artwork? 
• Explain why you think the artist chose to: 
  • incorporate twelve installations made up of several screens into the artwork. 
  • present the work in a darkened space. 
  • produce animated looped projections featuring organic and mechanic beings. 

• Photograph your favourite of Robak’s creatures born of AI. Describe them with a partner and explain why you chose them. 

Themes and ideas 

• What messages and meanings might Robak be trying to communicate in Megafauna? How is he communicating them?
• What fears and concerns might Robak have about our relationship with technology and how it shapes society? 
• Discuss the role artists play in highlighting significant issues and influencing change. What might a world without artists be like? 

Connections 

You might also like to explore 

• Refik Anadol Quantum memories Ground Floor Federation Court 
• Liam Young Planet City Ground Level TX2 
• Carnovsky Extinctions Level 2 E20 

Theme: Conservation

Topics: Sustainability, Digital technologies, Environmentalism

Location: Level 3 E16C’

Tromarama is an Indonesian-based artist collective founded by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans and Ruddy Hatumena. Their practice fuses video, installation and computer programming and explores the interrelationship between the virtual and the physical world. 

Solaris, 2020, is a mural-sized LED curtain that screens an ecosystem populated with jellyfish. Created with computer software used in video game platforms, the screening presents a digital simulation of a unique marine environment located off the coast of Indonesia’s Kalimantan Island. Living without the threat of predators, the jellyfish living in this 11,000-year-old body of salt and rainwater have evolved differently. Their existence provides scientific communities with a living laboratory for studying the potential effects of climate change on marine systems. 

Elements in Solaris respond to changes in real–time weather data from the body of water – wind speed moves the camera across the terrain, temperature readings affect the size and number of jellyfish, and cloud cover and UV readings alter the colouring of the environment. 

Guiding questions 

The artwork 

• Describe the look and feel of the animated simulation of the marine environment presented in Solaris. 
• Why do you think Tromarama decided to screen Solaris on a curtain of LED lights? How does this format affect the way you view and interact with the work? 
• Think about the placement Solaris among large-scale nineteenth–century paintings from the NGV Collection. Why do you think the curators have chosen to place it there? 
• Why do you think the artists decided to draw upon real–time weather data to produce the visuals for this installation? 

 Meanings and messages 

• How do you think an artistic visualisation of something scientific helps influence positive attitudes towards climate change and sustainability? 
• What ideas and hopes about the future of the natural world do you have when you view and experience the digital simulation of the environment depicted in Solaris? 

Connections 

You might also like to explore 

• Liam Young Planet City Ground Floor TX2 
• Carnovsky Extinctions Level 2 E20 
• Pirjo Haikola Urchin corals Level 3 E26 
• Hannah Brontë EYE HEAR U MAGIK Level 3 E27 

Theme: Illumination

Topics: Light – material, Light – Symbol, Knowledge, Culture

Location: Level 2 E23 & E24

Faye Toogood is a British designer working across interior, furniture, sculpture, fashion, textile and object design. Her Triennial work Downtime: Daylight, Candlelight, Moonlight is an immersive experience spanning three rooms that responds to the NGV’s Collection of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries British, Flemish and Dutch art. Along with works from the NGV Collection, each room displays a selection of works from Toogood’s studio including pieces of crystalline furniture, wall drawings, sculptural pieces and monumental tapestries. Each room explores a theme of light; daylight, candlelight and moonlight. The combination of artworks and objects presented in each room relate to the characteristics of each type of light: 

• Daylight presents an impression of clarity, 
• Candlelight, bathed in the effects of chiaroscuro, evokes the essence of portraits painted by Old Masters such as Rembrandt, and 
• Moonlight brings the experience to a shining and reflective close. 

Guiding questions 

The installation 

• Describe each of the rooms that contribute to the overall presentation of Downtime: Daylight, Candlelight, Moonlight. Consider the layout, the lighting, the atmosphere and the inclusion of various objects. 
• In what ways are the spaces standalone and unique, and in what ways do they belong to Toogood’s much bigger installation? 
• Think about the relationship between object and artwork in each space. How do they complement or challenge one another? 
   

Themes and ideas 

• How does each display relate to each theme of light? 
• Venues and spaces for generating new ideas were integral to the spreading of discussion and thought during the period of Enlightenment across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe. How do you think the design of interior and outdoor spaces can influence new ideas, ways of thinking, discussion and debate? 
• How does the term ‘downtime’ play into the spaces within this installation? What does the term mean to you, and are you able to experience it here? 
• What does this installation say about the role of art galleries and museums in society, both historically and today?
   

Connections 

You might also like to explore 

• Fallen Fruit Natural History Level 1 E14 
• National Gallery of Victoria Salon et lumière Level 2 E16B 
• Danielle Brustman Coloured in Level 2 E19 
• Cerith Wyn Evans C=O=D=A Level 2 E22 A