Made for This World Contemporary Art and the Places We Build
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Bridge crossing – one of a series of interactives by international artists featured in the exhibition – inspired children to create their own bridge constructions from bamboo. / View full image
When
26 Nov 2005 – 19 Feb 2006
Where
Queensland Art Gallery
About
'Made for this World' examines the constructed environments we live in – our homes, streets, buildings, suburbs and cities. Through contemporary art, children can discover new ways of seeing, making and imagining their everyday surroundings.
Presented across several major gallery spaces, the exhibition features works on paper, installation, painting and video by more than 20 Australian and international artists from the Gallery's Collection. Integral to the exhibition is the inclusion of four large-scale interactive art works by international contemporary artists. These works give children plenty of hands-on opportunities to work with materials and turn their imaginative ideas into reality.
With easy-to-read labels, an activity booklet and the exhibition mascot, Kitty the Alley Cat as tour guide, children are taken on a creative journey to rediscover the familiar places where we live, work and play.
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.
Aroound 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.
Olafur Eliasson's The cubic structural evolution project 2004 put 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 required, using small pieces of bamboo and tape.
Interactive for Kids!
Coinciding with 'Made for this World', the Gallery launched an online interactive based on exhibiting artist Yayoi Kusama's fascination with dots.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Ed Ruscha (USA) | Howard Arkley (Australia) | Art & Language (UK) | John Citizen (Australia) | Aleks Danko (Australia) | Olafur Eliasson (Denmark) | Richard Estes (USA) | Louise Forthun (Australia) | Rosalie Gascoigne (Australia) | Simryn Gill (Malaysia) | Durriya Kazi & David Alesworth (Pakistan) | Lin Martin (Australia) | Callum Morton (Australia) | Glen O'Malley (Australia) | Patricia Piccinini (Australia) | Qiu Zhijie (China) | Sonabai (India) | Song Dong (China) | Rodney Spooner (Australia) | Yayoi Kusama (Japan) | Cai Guo Qiang (China)