Online Exhibition
Summary:An online exhibition by students from the School of Creative Arts and Media.
DOMAIN is an online exhibition by students from the School of Creative Arts and Media.The exhibition takes place within a virtual tour of Domain House - an historic house in Hobart and the original home of the University of Tasmania. DOMAIN features multimedia installations and works-in-progress, which respond to ‘domain’ as a concept, from video and sound works to theatrical sets and scripts.
Background
During the course of Semester One, 2020, students in Making the Event were invited to respond to the historical, material, social and educational legacies of Domain House and its surrounds. Some students have interpreted this through dramatic and musical representations of the various eras that have been experienced within the walls of the building, while others have evoked a parallel history for the site.
Of interest to many of the students was the Waterworth Optical Collection, which houses 200 items from the ‘the Annexe’, located on the University of Tasmania’s Domain campus. The Optical Munitions Annexe 9/101, comprised of a group of Hobart scientists and around 200 women, was responsible for a major contribution to the Second World War effort. Here, students have interpreted the prisms, lens, projectors and labour through multiple vectors in their own works.
Building upon notions of refraction and reflection, other works engage with the topic of 'domain' in its broader applications, responding to the fluctuation of the boundaries between public and private that have been amplified in isolation. As the COVID-19 pandemic led to drastic changes to how we lead our lives, students had to turn to new ways to express their ideas in the home. This meant reflecting on the various ways that public life was reimagined in the domestic space, and how the institutions that govern us and the methods by which we communicate became entwined with our personal sanctuaries.
During an extraordinary semester, these students have risen to the challenge of creating work that encompasses how we can evoke both our histories and our present through our built and lived environments. Congratulations on your hard work, responsiveness, and innovative thinking.
