An international exhibition of creative works that challenge our preconceptions of ‘the interior’ through a diverse range of research projects. www.interiorbecomings.com

This research exhibition aims to encourage expansion in the fields of research practices and ultimately their audiences, in concert with the official bodies that measure research output, in order to locate and define a research model for interior architecture/interior design disciplines. The curators’ fundamental intention is to connect the research ideas with the broader public beyond scholarly publications. We believe that creative works provide a wider and diverse range of media and experience to communicate the enquiries that inspire the researcher/s.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjo22EpFuAU&feature=share&list=UUqleqbNFNUPnClHexaqN79A

An Interior Affair: A State of Becoming is an IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association) exhibition hosted by Curtin University and curated by Professor Marina Lommerse, Jane Lawrence, Sven Mehzoud  and Stuart Foster, in collaboration with FORM.

Designers – Researchers

Trish Bould, United KingdomLynn Churchill, AustraliaLorella Di Cintio, CanadaJoel Day, Australia Karen ann Donnachie, Australia. Penelope Forlano, Australia Stuart Foster, New Zealand Anthony Fryatt, Australia Rachel Hurst, Australia Roger Kemp, Australia Jane Lawrence, Australia Marina Lommerse, Australia

Sarah Breen Lovett, AustraliaNatalie McLeod, New ZealandJane Lawrence, AustraliaAndrea Mina, Australia Belinda Mitchell, United Kingdom Antony Nevin, New Zealand Jonsara Ruth, United States Dianne Smith, Australia Igor Siddiqui, United States Nancy Spanbroek, Australia Reena Tiwari, Australia Amanda Yates, New Zealand

FORM GALLERY 7 SEPTEMBER – 6 OCTOBER 2012, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

An Interior Affair: a State of Becoming explores, extends and challenges the world of the interior as a state of constant and dynamic ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. With the focus on the interior in flux, this exhibition draws attention to the following questions: How do our windows to the virtual world – the computer, the mobile phone, facebook, and their precedents, the book, the magazine, the camera, the ‘big’ screen and the television – drive our expectations, vision, desire and experiences of ‘real’ interior space? Where is the value in constantly ‘becoming’ new? Entropy followed by death and renewal is the natural cycle. How do we reconsider ‘the old’? What is adaptive re-use? What and how do we recycle? How do we re-vision the history of interiors in the light of ‘becoming’? What are the potential roles and responsibilities for interior designers / interior architects in addressing becoming homeless and ‘being’ disadvantaged?

The exhibition is entirely research-based and explores the interaction between the interior and the researcher, not as a monogamous engagement , but rather as a ménage á trois. This complex arrangement includes the researcher’s engagement with the work and exhibition, the reader as a voyeur, and the curator’s commitment to the researcher/s, the creative works and the public. Entwined in this ménage á trois are other equally intimate relationships or affairs that the researchers have with their creative works. Collectively, through the metaphor of an interior affair, the works in the exhibition can be categorised as intimate, remote, critical, platonic, strained, estranged, violent and/or familial affairs with or within the interior.

Creative works as research exhibits include Sarah Breen Lovett’s

Interior: reframed with expanded architecture which is a documentary exploring the use of moving image installation as a device for understanding the architectural interior. By re-framing, re-focusing and re-projecting the architectural interior back on itself, these Expanded Architecture installations continue a lineage of art practice from the 1920s to the present and explore the shifting, unfolding nature of the architectural interior. http://www.interiorbecomings.com/interior-unfolding-with-expanded-architecture.html

 PHOTOGRAPHER – SARAH BREEN LOVETT, 2010

 

From New Zealand Designer-Researcher – Amanda Yates exhibits Topographical Interiors which focuses on research into the interior as a partial or temporal condition that is always in flow. Underpinning these spatial enquiries is a theoretical inquiry into the Oceanic concept of wa (between-ness) and Western theories of becoming. The exhibition installation incorporates a transient temporality through the use of shifting images inset within the topographical table surface. http://www.interiorbecomings.com/topographical-interiors.html

 PHOTOGRAPHER – PAUL MCCREDLE, 2009

 

A final example is Dis[Place]Ment: A Woman’s Perspective by Designers-Researchers – Marina Lommerse, Lynn Churchill, Dianne Smith, Karen ann Donnachie and Joel Day. By collaborating with women who have experienced displacement, this research intends to affect the kind of places women find themselves in when they are fragile, disempowered, and at times invisible. The installation constructs ‘place’ as a series of narratives and transactions of self, to offer some insight into how women-at-risk may perceive certain environments. http://www.interiorbecomings.com/displacement-a-womanrsquos-perspective.html

 PHOTOGRAPHER – KAREN ANN DONNACHIE, 2002