Scenographic Exhibitions as Spaces of Encounter

Abstract

AbstractThis research article discusses theatre and performance‐based exhibition design strategies and their application for the display and engagement with narratives about landscape, place and country. The Interpretive Wonderings* mapping project and exhibition serves as a case study to discuss the application of an expanded scenographic exhibition practice. Interpretive Wonderings was shaped by the coming together of community and artists in regional New South Wales, Australia, and was the result of a partnership between Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal organization that holds and manages land on behalf of its members, researchers from three Australian universities and a regional Arts Centre. Through this project, curatorial and design processes are reconsidered using a performance‐based lens to address engagement with complex and politically contentious narratives.*Editorial note: The Interpretive Wonderings Portfolio comprises a set of interrelated writings that attempt to provide a distinctive, multi‐perspectival account of this creative research project. In addition to this research piece, other articles include: a co‐authored contextual overview which situates the project in theoretical and practical terms’, a compilation of short texts that offer reflective analyses from the different perspectives of the project’s curatorium and principal researchers, Sophia Pearce, Campbell Drake, Jock Gilbert and Sven Mehzoud, and an associated research‐led article by Gilbert (2019, this issue). Read individually, each designated article presents a focused inquiry (depth); taken together as a curated series, they provide the reader with the opportunity to gain a comprehensive overview (breadth) and appreciation of the project’s guiding aspirations, objectives and outcomes that amounts to more than the sum of its discrete parts.