Yura Nura – People and Country
Designing a compelling, sculptural, spatial and multi-sensory experience to express tensions and facilitate dialogues
Sydney Living Museums
For this exhibition, Trigger revitalised the museum space to house two connected installations about Aboriginal responses to colonialism. One installation is an arena to facilitate a video experience, while the other is a space to view visual art. This exhibition holds stories that are a counterpoint to many other stories within the museum, so Trigger’s design represented this as a dramatic cultural metal piece that shears its way through the floor – enhancing the gravitas of the experience. Trigger’s vision was for the design to be as provocative as the history it represents.
Trigger delivered creative, evocative and contemporary design solutions for the Museum of Sydney that successfully met all aspects of the challenging project brief. The team developed a gallery design that was sensitive to the content and layered with unique, striking and considered material details.
Bob Whight – Acting Head, Curatorial & Exhibitions, Sydney Living Museums
Inside the theatrette, the screen becomes an enveloping layer. The unstructured, loose geometries of the bleacher seating create a non-traditional theatrette, a place to dwell and understand stories, to understand that this was and is about people. It evokes being held and taken care of.
Trigger sought to render the intangible, seismic forces, prompted by exhibition curation, visible by using a large screen as a surprising insertion that is out of scale with the confined room. The form suggests these forces stretch far beyond architectural confines. The materiality and spatial design reflect the “shredding” of colonial narratives. The texture of the screen is in dialogue with the refined sandstone of the building, and evokes interwoven stories and the knots of events.