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Sentient Paper is a new exhibition in the China Gallery of University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum and draws upon the art collection of the museum, with selections from the Powerhouse Museum and the White Rabbit Gallery Collection, and from private collections and artists.
This exhibition celebrates paper as an ancient enlightening technology, an embodiment of knowledge, a vehicle for political and philosophical ideologies, as well as an expressive artistic medium. The design intervention takes its cue from the materiality of artefacts being celebrated - paper. The concept imagines a singular sheet of paper folded and manipulated to form a display wall. Scaling up this concept into built form meant a singular timber framed wall featured cuts and folded forms to achieve a freestanding shape within the space, its edges tapered to paper-like thinness. The cuts in the wall form apertures framing key artworks in adjacent spaces. Backgrounding the intervention is a 10 metre glass showcase with thin steel plinths inside - a legacy of our first exhibition design in the space.
The graphic elements in the space echo the paper-thin architectural intervention with title letters and didactic panels folded out of 3mm aluminium.
Photography: Hamish McIntosh
Curator: Shuxia Chen
Exhibition manager: Luke Parker
Graphic Design: Matt Nix
Lighting design: Ben Cisterne
Builder: Art Services NSW and Preset Construction