Title:
Blessed Be The Work – Australian Contemporary Design in Jewish
Ceremony II
Location: Jewish Museum of Australia
Exhibition Design: Rosemary Simons
Client: Jewish Museum of Australia
Design
Brief: To design a ‘streamlined, Australian,
contemporary (but reflecting the past), sturdy, warm, ritualistic
and with a wandering path’ exhibition within the museum’s
temporary exhibition space.
Design
Notes: Doing justice to a collection of pieces from
the country’s best craftspeople and to do so as it tours
to a wide variety of venues was the challenge, this is how
it was approached:
The gorgeous,
often self coloured exhibits, inspired a choice of exhibition
materials that were also self coloured: the silver of aluminium,
the white of linen and the gold of woodgrain. A ritualistic,
burgundy background helped set the mood.
Despite it’s
diversity, the collection nevertheless needed to present as a ‘family’.
To help achieve this, showcases, set at heights to suit exhibits,
formed part of the layered installation ‘landscape’ which
accommodated the disparity in scale, medium and type of exhibit.
This durable
and adaptable furniture design was arranged with procession-like
formality. It could be linked like threaded beads, using poles
and lintels, to another piece of furniture.
The perspex
lintels were multi functional and supported, like the showcases,
by inverted ‘U’ shaped aluminium plinths. There were
portals between exhibit groupings and on some, linen information
panels hung like back-lit ‘veils’.
Client
Comments: “...time to congratulate you. For
understanding our brief with a quiet confidence and intelligence
and interpreting our requirements with sensitivity and accuracy....all
congratulate you for your ability to work with the committee,
converting ideas and suggestions into a design format which
we all welcome and love.
For your truly
magnificent exhibition design which highlights the objects, respects
the tradition and celebrates the contemporary aesthetic and the
Australian content. The objects are the stars of the show, but
they shine because of the attention you have given to the display
cases, graphics and colour scheme and traffic flow. For your
superb documentation........ For bringing the exhibition in on
budget and on time.......For managing the project so that the
exhibition was assembled without a hitch....And especially for
your professionalism and reliability and integrity......” (Luba
Bilu, Exhibition Coordinator, ‘Blessed Be The Work’ Jewish
Museum of Australia 1999).
Acknowledgments:
Curator: Luba Bilu
Fabricator: Ian Grenda
Graphic Designer: Ian Robertson
Photographer: Dieu Tan
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