highlights the importance of providing patrons with an experience unlike that of its past exhibitions: a truly interactive one. Personally, I have found the majority of gallery exhibitions that I have experienced to be, at times, overwhelmingly alienating. Curators are asking me to interact with work that I am incapable of interacting with. Walking into the invitingly wide open space of the Contemporary Jewellery section of the Melbourne Now exhibit blew those preconceptions away. Never before has an artist spoken to me, personally, as a viewer about the meanings and motivations behind the work in front of me; galleries usually reserve that space for an impersonal, third-person blurb about the artist and materials used. Meredith Turnbull not only invited me into her frame of mind whilst creating Co Workers, Hanging Sculpture, pondering the differences between sculpture and jewellery, or rather sculpture as jewellery, but then proceeded to invite me to experiment for myself, with a choice to either leave the finished product for others to enjoy or take it home with me. I sat there, at the round wooden table, on a small wooden chair, colouring in my small, round wooden pendants engaging with an artist like never before, pondering the same questions that she did. There was a little girl next to me with her mother, colouring in and stringing together her own piece of artwork. Turnbull is not alienating patrons, putting her work on a pedestal while we enjoy it from our place on the ground. She is allowing us all to be at her level, imagining ourselves in her shoes.
By the same token, Greg More's continually evolving Zoom exhibit invites passers-by to contribute to his Data Tapestry by asking the question how might we design our future city? The we in that sentence being everyone from city planners to catering assistants, as long as you live and respect our city, your opinion counts. Suggestions range from the vague ("design accessible places" - okay), to the more specific ("reconfigure the quarter acre block"); while one particular suggestion caught my eye that seems to encapsulate the purpose and soul of the project, "civic participation is the heart of civic design". My opinions were more aggressive and environmentally focused because, hey, they asked! While it is not made explicit what More intends to do with the vast array of suggestions, simply the idea of propelling our city into the future together as its citizens gets us excited and hopeful about something we never expected to be apart of, or asked our opinion on.
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