Before ideas take form, they are tested, pulled apart and remade. Sketches are crossed out. Models collapse. Prototypes are rebuilt, again and again.
At the University of Tasmania’s Inveresk campus this June, those early stages of making will be on display, with the launch of Winter Wunderkammer, part of the Wonder in the Workshop program.
Running from 9am to 5pm, 15–24 June, Winter Wunderkammer invites visitors inside the process. Sketchbooks, models, prototypes and works in progress will sit side by side, offering a glimpse of what happens before an idea is finished.
Inspired by the idea of a wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, the exhibition brings together fragments, studies and unfinished work that show thinking as it develops. Rather than presenting resolved projects, Winter Wunderkammer stays in the middle, where ideas are tested, questioned and reworked through materials and tools.
Dr Andrew Steen, creative director of Winter Wunderkammer, has sought to create an engaging display of the rich mix of concepts, images, models and plans being continuously generated in the building.
“The Workshop is where ideas are challenged, reshaped and sometimes abandoned. Sharing that process helps people understand how imagination is translated to reality.”
While Wonder in the Workshop works with schools, Winter Wunderkammer opens the doors to the wider community. It offers a chance to see how creative and technical disciplines intersect, and how ideas move between art, architecture, design and technology.
Head of the School of Architecture and Design, Professor Julian Worrall, said Winter Wunderkammer reflects how critical thinking, creative processes and problem solving are embedded across the programs delivered at the Workshop.
“This is an opportunity to peek behind the curtain of our Inveresk ideas factory. Here architecture, design, the creative arts, and ICT share questions, inspirations, methods, and artefacts to form a stimulating matrix from which new things are born. Winter Wunderkammer opens that up to a wider audience.”
By opening its spaces and sharing work in progress, Winter Wunderkammer gives the public a clearer sense of how ideas take shape over time.
Winter Wunderkammer
- When: 9am to 5pm, 15–24 June
- Who: Open to students, teachers and the general public
- More information: Wonder in the Workshop – University of Tasmania