ICON Issue Four • May - June 2014
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PROMO PORTRAITS FROM PRIME TIME National Portrait Gallery
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Contents
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86 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Bush Blitz
12 In discussion with Kim McKay AO and Dr. Mathew Trinca
90 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Winter at TMAG
14 Art Gallery of New South Wales Plumes and pearlshells
92 Art Gallery of South Australia Lace: The art of adornment
20 National Library of Australia Treasures Gallery
96 Art Gallery of South Australia Urpflanze: Street plants
26 Powerhouse Museum Need for Speed
98 South Australian Museum Night Lab
30 Powerhouse Museum Strictly Ballroom Returns
104 Queensland Museum Network From the home front to the front line
32 National Gallery of Victoria Titian and the Venetian Empire
108 Queensland Museum Network Squid on the move
38 Australian Museum Harriet and Helena: The Scott Sisters
110 Art Gallery of Western Australia AGWA Foundation celebrates 25th anniversary
44 Sydney Living Museums Celebrating Home and Architecture
112 Art Gallery of Western Australia Animal Ark
50 National Archives of Australia Discovering Anzacs
114 Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 30 years of contemporary art
8 Iconic Notes News and views
56 Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne 118 Western Australian Museum Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel Dinosaur Discovery
62 Australian War Memorial The rare skill of remembering
122 Western Australian Museum Inside: Life in children’s homes and institutions
68 Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Respecting tradition, Embracing innovation
124 National Museum of Australia Culture through time
74 National Film and Sound Archive Art you can hear
130 Australian National Maritime Museum East Coast Encounter
78 National Film and Sound Archive Stories behind the stories
134 Australian National Maritime Museum Robert F. Scott’s Antarctic Expedition
80 Museum of Old and New Art MONA’s Dark Mofo
136 ICONIC Society Social photographs
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ICON
Issue FOUR • MAY - JUNE 2014
BLOCKBUSTER
A
s I write this, AZTECS has just opened to rave reviews at Melbourne Museum. In cooperation with Mexico’s major museums, more than 200 artefacts that trace the history of the Aztec Empire in central Mexico in the 15th century have been loaned to the Melbourne Museum until August 10. This fabulous exhibition then moves to Sydney, opening at the Australian Museum on 13 September. It is encouraging to see that our major museums continue to invest in these blockbusters and that the public is supporting them in such huge numbers. It is purely by co-incidence that ICON’s Director interview series that we started in issue 3 has coincided with so many new appointments at our major institutions. In this issue we meet the new Director of the Australian Museum, Kim McKay AO. Kim is well known for her work with Clean Up Australia and the Genographic Project. Kim says she wants museum science to be showcased more “because people find it amazing.” Our second Director’s interview is with Dr Mathew Trinca who has just been confirmed as the new Director of the National Museum of Australia. Dr Mathew Trinca, who has been with the Museum for the last ten years and most recently as its acting Director, says he wants to take the Canberra icon to the next level, so that it is the first place people think of when they have questions about Australia’s history and society. ICON wishes both Directors much success in their new positions. As always, this issue of ICON is full of amazing stories and photographs and choosing a favourite image is very difficult. In fact, I have chosen two this issue: Stephen Bush‘s Alabaster welcome on page 56, and Michael Cook’s Undiscovered #4 on page 131.
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ICON Issue Four • May - June 2014
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Front Cover National Portrait Gallery PROMO Portraits from Prime Time
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PORTRAITS FROM PRIME TIME National Portrait Gallery
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ISSUE FIVE On sale 4 July 2014
Powerhouse Museum
R Artwork for the Gala Premiere Invitation,‘Strictly Ballroom’, M&A Film Corporation Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia, 1991. Photo: Powerhouse Museum.
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Returns Film costumes, `Strictly Ballroom’, ballgowns, M&A Film Corporation Pty Ltd/Angus Strathie/ Nola Lowe/Barrie Lowe, Sydney, Australia, 1991. Glynis Jones, Curator Fashion & Dress in background. Photo: Powerhouse Museum.
Strictly Ballroom A new exhibition celebrates the sequinned splendour of the hit stage and screen musical. WORDS: Charles Pickett, Curator, Powerhouse Museum.
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t’s thirty years since Strictly Ballroom commenced its mission to set the world dancing. In 1984 it began life as a group-devised student musical at NIDA, before a longer version was developed in 1986 for the International Festival of Theatre Academies in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Here a young cast including Nell Schofield, Sonia Todd and Baz Luhrmann won the prize for best production. In 1988 Strictly Ballroom returned to Sydney, via the Brisbane Expo, for a season at the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf Theatre, again as a stage musical. Glenn Keenan reprised the lead role of Scott while
Tara Morice made her debut as Fran. After years of reworking and spruiking for backers, the 1992 movie took Strictly Ballroom to the world. This year the show returned to its theatrical roots, opening at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in March. Strictly Ballroom’s theme is Scott and Fran’s battle for individual expression against the old-school leaders of the dance competition world. As the blurb for the 1988 Wharf production put it: “Scott Hastings is trapped in a world where every dancer knows their place. In a world where no one dares to step on the toes of the Federation. In a world that is Strictly Ballroom”.
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Detail: men’s `Final Festival’ film costume, `Strictly Ballroom’, M&A Film Corporation Pty Ltd/Angus Strathie, Sydney, Australia, 1991. Photo: Powerhouse Museum.
Part of the appeal of the movie is its juxtaposition of suburban life and ballroom glamour.According to the movie pitch:“when the knock-off whistle blows they escape to a world of colour, discarding their overalls and clerical uniforms for satins and silks…” Brighter and louder than the real ballroom dresses which provided their inspiration, the costumes played a critical role in creating the ‘larger than life’ quality of the film.The Powerhouse Museum has an extensive collection of these costumes as well as design drawings and photos created during the film’s production. Many of these are by Catherine Martin, who has worked on every version of Strictly Ballroom since 1988 as well as numerous other collaborations with Baz Luhrmann. Catherine Martin has generously donated to the Museum designs and costumes from stage and screen, as well as fashion from her personal collection. The new exhibition tells the story of Strictly Ballroom through design drawings, cast and set photos, performance and rehearsal clips as well as 40 original costumes. The Strictly Ballroom story runs at the Powerhouse Museum from 5 April until 9 November 2014. This article was first published in Powerline, the magazine of the Powerhouse Museum.
Jacopo Bassano Italian c.1510–1592 The Israelites drinking the Miraculous Water (Gli Israeliti bevendo l’acqua miracolosa) c.1566–68 oil on canvas, 146.0 x 230.0 cm Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, (P06312) Spanish Royal Collection
Although Titian did not specialise in portraits in the strictest sense, he was nevertheless gifted and innovative in this area. He was in great demand among the elite of Venice and Europe, and their portraits constitute the bulk of his oeuvre. Titian’s portraits are more about outward expression of the status and role of sitters than they are about the kind of psychological exploration associated with later portraitists, such as Rembrandt. It is worth remembering that in Titian’s time portraiture was a relatively new genre in painting, revived only during the Renaissance when art developed beyond the generic representations of people that had been produced since the decline of ancient Rome. Titian’s sitters, his patrons, seem more interested in appearance and accuracy than in introspection. The sensuality of Titian’s art and the sensitivity with which he approached his subjects was a quantum leap for portraiture. His masterly technique allowed him to render fabric, fur, metal (especially armour) and glass with such brilliance that there is little wonder he was in such constant demand. Titian’s genius is also seen in the endless variation that he brought to his compositions and the posing of his sitters. His use of props – from an
elaborate suit of armour to the subtle use of a clenched glove or the inclusion of a clock – also invigorated his portraiture. His figures are highly animated and appear purposeful, which presumably appealed to the egos of his predominately male sitters. The notion that drawing played little part in Venetian art has assumed mythical proportions. The debate has raged since the days of Giorgio Vasari, who in 1568 articulated the division between the relative importance of disegno in Florence and colorito in Venice, stating that Venetian artists simply did not draw. Scholars have lent some credence to this idea by reporting the comparative scarcity of Venetian drawings. Nevertheless, that drawing played no part in the work of artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese is a misconception based in on a misunderstanding of how drawing was used by Venetian artists. Many extant Venetian drawings are compositional aids for the posing of figures.A wealth of portrait drawings and drawn landscapes by Venetian artists also exist. Absent, however, are vast numbers of the sort of highly detailed preparatory renderings of compositional elements for paintings.Although underdrawing is evident in Venetian paintings, it is often
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rudimentary and not slavishly followed as artists from the Veneto, especially Titian and Tintoretto, built up form through the successive layering of pigments and glazes. The appeal of sixteenth-century Venetian art is its sensuality combined with a level of bravado and confidence that reflects the city’s perceived importance in Italian history and culture. During this period the Venetian Republic was what today we would call a ‘world power’. It was financially strong, politically independent and a true empire that commanded extensive networks of international trade.The region’s bold spirit is echoed in its art, which could explain its popularity with the contemporary Spanish monarchs who acquired a vast number of modern Venetian paintings. Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado is on at NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, from 16 May to 31 August, admission fees apply. See ngv.vic.gov.au for details. This essay was first published in the NGV publication Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado
Jacopo Bassano Italian c.1510–1592 The Israelites drinking the Miraculous Water (Gli Israeliti bevendo l’acqua miracolosa) c.1566–68 oil on canvas, 146.0 x 230.0 cm Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, (P06312) Spanish Royal Collection
Although Titian did not specialise in portraits in the strictest sense, he was nevertheless gifted and innovative in this area. He was in great demand among the elite of Venice and Europe, and their portraits constitute the bulk of his oeuvre. Titian’s portraits are more about outward expression of the status and role of sitters than they are about the kind of psychological exploration associated with later portraitists, such as Rembrandt. It is worth remembering that in Titian’s time portraiture was a relatively new genre in painting, revived only during the Renaissance when art developed beyond the generic representations of people that had been produced since the decline of ancient Rome. Titian’s sitters, his patrons, seem more interested in appearance and accuracy than in introspection. The sensuality of Titian’s art and the sensitivity with which he approached his subjects was a quantum leap for portraiture. His masterly technique allowed him to render fabric, fur, metal (especially armour) and glass with such brilliance that there is little wonder he was in such constant demand. Titian’s genius is also seen in the endless variation that he brought to his compositions and the posing of his sitters. His use of props – from an
elaborate suit of armour to the subtle use of a clenched glove or the inclusion of a clock – also invigorated his portraiture. His figures are highly animated and appear purposeful, which presumably appealed to the egos of his predominately male sitters. The notion that drawing played little part in Venetian art has assumed mythical proportions. The debate has raged since the days of Giorgio Vasari, who in 1568 articulated the division between the relative importance of disegno in Florence and colorito in Venice, stating that Venetian artists simply did not draw. Scholars have lent some credence to this idea by reporting the comparative scarcity of Venetian drawings. Nevertheless, that drawing played no part in the work of artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese is a misconception based in on a misunderstanding of how drawing was used by Venetian artists. Many extant Venetian drawings are compositional aids for the posing of figures.A wealth of portrait drawings and drawn landscapes by Venetian artists also exist. Absent, however, are vast numbers of the sort of highly detailed preparatory renderings of compositional elements for paintings.Although underdrawing is evident in Venetian paintings, it is often
37
rudimentary and not slavishly followed as artists from the Veneto, especially Titian and Tintoretto, built up form through the successive layering of pigments and glazes. The appeal of sixteenth-century Venetian art is its sensuality combined with a level of bravado and confidence that reflects the city’s perceived importance in Italian history and culture. During this period the Venetian Republic was what today we would call a ‘world power’. It was financially strong, politically independent and a true empire that commanded extensive networks of international trade.The region’s bold spirit is echoed in its art, which could explain its popularity with the contemporary Spanish monarchs who acquired a vast number of modern Venetian paintings. Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado is on at NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, from 16 May to 31 August, admission fees apply. See ngv.vic.gov.au for details. This essay was first published in the NGV publication Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado
National Archives of Australia
Ettie Rout’s work was greatly appreciated by World War I soldiers. She’s shown here in Paris with some of her admirers. (Archives New Zealand)
regular inspections of a local brothel, to which she referred soldiers, to ensure it met her hygiene and safety standards. “Her letter to the New Zealand Times asking for government money for this sexual health work caused a scandal,” said David Knight. “The New Zealand government banned newspapers from reporting on her and the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement condemned her work.” The movement’s conference expressed “its utter abhorrence at the effrontery of Ettie Rout in implying that New Zealand boys must be supplied with remedies to make wrong-doing safe and sin easy”. But the soldiers greatly admired her work, her fortitude and her moral courage. When she died in 1936 an elderly Australian war veteran described her as “the finest woman – the best and most magnificent person I have ever known”.
Early plastic surgery Another behind-the-scenes hero from New Zealand was the plastic surgeon pioneer Lieutenant Colonel Henry Percy Pickerill.
“He was one of New Zealand’s greatest military surgeons,” said David Knight. “As a brilliant academic and skilful surgeon, his pioneering treatment of facial wounds during the war helped form the basis of modern plastic surgery. “In England, after achieving remarkable results in the treatment of horrific war wounds, he won a reputation in the fields of plastic surgery and facial reconstruction. “With a team of surgeons, dentists, anaesthetists and medical illustrators, Pickerill helped pioneer new techniques of tissue transfer, higher standards of hygiene and new forms of anaesthesia. For example, in 1917, he started using tubes of live skin to increase blood flow to skin grafts.” For men who had lost parts of their face or jaw, treatment was a long, slow process. To avoid infection, surgery had to be carried out in gradual stages and a soldier might need up to a dozen separate operations over several years. Other body parts, including their scalp, ribs and abdomen might be used to re-create aspects of their face. Each stage was documented in photographs or paintings, many of which have been retained
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in the Gillies and Macalister Archives in the United Kingdom. Even after the war he continued the long-term care of many wounded men at Dunedin Hospital. His work meant that severely disfigured veterans had a chance of regaining a life. In 1929 the Auckland Star wrote of one soldier who was hit by a shell which shattered his jaw, cut off his nose, blew his lips off and left the flesh of his chin hanging over his neck. After long and painful treatment by Dr Pickerill, the soldier was relieved that he could “walk down Pitt Street now and be treated like all the rest of the Diggers”. Discovering Anzacs does not only portray war stories. It also investigates what was happening on the home front during World War I, artistic and creative endeavours based on war experiences such as Love and War postcards, and what happened to those classified as enemy aliens and interned at home. There are also links to soldiers who enlisted for the Boer War. The website can be explored at discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au
Love and War postcards have been preserved in the National Archives’ copyright collection.This shows the anguish of waiting at home for news from the front.
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The Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne
Stephen Bush The recliners were only the beginning 2012 oil on canvas, 200 x 300 cm Collection of Michael Schwarz and David Clouston, Melbourne © Courtesy the artist
hard-working presence of the beekeeper. However, the push-pull that reverberates across his work like a refrain is an ongoing fascination with the artist’s desire, or indeed, need to create, and a constant (almost self-deprecating) inquiry into just what this achieves. Through the tasks, tests, or games (it is never quite clear) that Stephen Bush sets himself, the act of painting is re-invigorated and remains a challenge; notions of the original and copy, high and low culture, authenticity and value become part of the conversation, and any sense of ‘progress’ or a clear trajectory informing the artist’s oeuvre is happily thwarted. The questions may be apparent here, but there are never straightforward answers. Indeed, the answers seem to throw up more questions, and we are somehow back at the beginning ... sort of, but not really. Stephen Bush has presented three distinct but interrelated aspects of his practice across the gallery spaces at the Potter: the
landscape (with accompanying overlays of the sublime, the taming of nature, or of pioneering endeavour); the use of purple (which speaks, through their absence, of the other hues that have preoccupied him over time), and the recurring motif of the beekeeper. However, these ‘groups’ of works are in no way contained by the walls of the spaces that house them, and continue to remain in dialogue through the (re)appearance of various shared attributes—wonkily constructed log cabins, sweeping alpine vistas, modernist structures, and a cast of animals (often, the goat), to name but a few— that hover incongruously within swirling, apocalyptic landscapes of oil and enamel paint whose pooled surfaces and acidic palette are like the stuff of toxic waste; bringing in turn a new, more insidious inflection to the hooded figure of the beekeeper. As an artist who has lived and continued to paint through the endless ‘deaths’ and revivals of painting decried across the
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decades, Bush remains ever-conscious of the irony of his own position. On one level, the perilous pick-up-sticks wooden structures, strange heraldic forms, and vast array of log cabins that float within his paintings are an ode to the unknown maker, raising questions of authorship, taste, value and ‘signature style’ that play against and within his own instantly recognisable images. The artist’s recent body of gouaches, Saunders Cuthbert (2013–14) for example, both depict and venerate the chook shed. Encompassing a catalogue of different shed styles—from simple wooden enclosures, shrunken replicas of North American farmhouses to streamlined modernist factories—this series presents the viewer with a suite of extraordinary structures whose imaginative design extends far beyond the everyday practicalities and demands of their use. Disconcertingly ‘out of time’— neither of the present or the past—their sepia palette nevertheless evokes a sense of
Stephen Bush with his wall mural Coppersmith 2014 Photographer: Viki Petherbridge
history and of memory (with all its ‘tricks’ of accuracy, re-writing and subsequent fabrication). This interest in the traditional use of images as recording tools, instruments of learning and as conveyors of information is also apparent in the, it must be said, rather whacky group of works from the University Art Collection that Stephen Bush has included within the exhibition. Described by the artist as a kind of ‘mad uncle art’, the selection of objects ranges from prints by celebrated colonial artists such as Nicholas Chevalier, ST Gill and John Gould’s work (one cannot help but imagine that Bush’s selection of Gould was at least partly informed by childhood memories of the ubiquitous Gould League of Victoria’s flora and fauna posters of the 1960s and 70s); watercolours and botanical illustrations by unknown artists; drawings by Melbournebased architect Lloyd Orton; a pair of carved wooden panels, and a wonderfully
naïve and charming series of ink drawings of birds on wooden panels from a grand Victorian house in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Displayed in the same gallery as the artist’s purple paintings, these works together raise often unspoken questions about the politics, hidden stories and idiosyncrasies of institutional collecting, just as their very presence within the exhibition space cannot help but suggest a relationship to Stephen Bush’s own practice (possible areas of influence, confluence and interest?). True to historical form however, this sense of possible connection to Bush’s work remains nothing but a whisper; a cheeky and indeterminate suggestion that oscillates, and ultimately, refuses to settle. Related issues of authority, authorship and intent similarly ripple around Coppersmith (2014), the painted wall mural adjacent to the large group of beekeeper works that are displayed en masse in one of the Potter’s gallery spaces. A deliberate
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translation or schematic of an intricate (and mass produced) paisley design sourced by Bush, the execution of Coppersmith by a group of students from the Victorian College of the Arts Painting program informally mirrors the traditional atelier model, in which the artist assumes the position of both mentor and director. While its explosive areas of bold, clashing colour gleefully amplifies the celebratory chorus of Bush’s own work, its presence, along with the collection works displayed in the gallery below, similarly encourages us to ponder the complex web of issues and value judgements that separate the artist from the artisan, and the craft of simply making something well, from art. In the end, this exhibition is, of course, both an acknowledgement and celebration of the ongoing contribution and work of Stephen Bush, painter; but the work itself, with all its twists, turns and dead ends, never allows us to assume this position easily or lightly.
MONA - Museum of Old and New Art
MONA opening Fire display. Picture: Sean Fennessy / Museum of Old and New Art
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MONA’S
DARK MOFO CELEBRATE THE DARK
Since Neolithic times, seasonal winter solstice rites have been held around the longest night and the shortest day, to face the darkness and celebrate the light. Each June, darkness spreads across Tasmania, as the Museum of Old and New Art’s winter festival Dark Mofo returns to celebrate the dark through large-scale public art, food, music, light and noise.
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Western Australian Museum
Overhead view of exhibition being bumped in Image: OK- White Lane
I look up to see a long tail twitching, ever so slightly, back and forth. And did that Spinosaurus just look at me?
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he custom-made exhibition is spine-tingling, with 21 life-size animatronic models, set in their own prehistoric, Cretaceous era environment. To be honest, at this hour they’re just a little bit spooky. A slight breeze rustles through the jungle-like diorama. The floor behind me creaks and I jump. I look up to see a long tail twitching, ever so slightly, back and forth. And did that Spinosaurus just look at me? Welcome to Dinosaur Discovery: Lost Creatures of the Cretaceous. A few hours later and the WA Museum’s beautiful 100-year-old Hackett Hall is alive and buzzing with the first 150 visitors keen to experience the world premiere of Australia’s latest and most exciting dinosaur exhibition. The juxtaposition of Hackett Hall’s soaring ceilings and antique fittings, enclosing this snapshot of Cretaceous era jungle filled with
Model of Deinosuchus. Image: OK- White Lane
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And as interactivity goes hand in hand with authenticity when engaging with a range of audiences, the WA Museum has developed unique 3D content that can be accessed via frame markers located throughout the exhibition, on individual tickets, and on giant displays and billboards inside, outside and actually on the Museum itself.
moving, growling dinosaurs evokes images of old world adventurers. Designed to be as accurate as possible, the exhibition has been developed according to the latest paleontological research and analysis. Recent finds and a re-evaluation of previous dinosaur research are changing the way we look at and understand dinosaurs, and the Museum hopes this exhibition will encourage visitors to learn more about these incredible creatures. As well as the towering and traditional Cretaceous era favourites like Tyrannosaurs rex, there is also a section on Australian dinosaurs including some species rarely seen before. And as interactivity goes hand in hand with authenticity when engaging with a range of audiences, the WA Museum has developed unique 3D content that can be accessed via frame markers located throughout the exhibition, on individual tickets, and on giant displays and billboards inside, outside and actually on the Museum itself. An example of this content inside the exhibition is its use to depict a battle to the death revealed by the fossilized, articulated skeletons of a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops, captured mid-fight and frozen in time. The skeletons were discovered in what is now the Gobi Desert in Mongolia in 1971, and the evidence surrounding them has led scientists to believe both dinosaurs were killed simultaneously, smothered by sand, as they were locked in deadly combat. The skeletons were found with the predatory Velociraptor’s claws raking the belly of
Try at your own peril: scan this Spinosoraus with your device, using the “Dinosaur Discovery” app and see it leap out this page!
the plant-eating Protoceratops, which had grasped Velociraptor’s right fore-limb in its jaws in its fight for survival. This scene is played out in a special diorama using a unique combination of animatronics and 3D augmented reality, accessed via tablets attached to the information panels, and it tells us something of the fight for life shared by every living thing in the Cretaceous period. Outside the exhibition, the 3D component is everywhere – leaping out of billboards, flyers, posters, the glass entry foyer of the Museum itself, and it is also embedded in every ticket for the exhibition. As soon as anyone downloads the free app available through the Apple app store and via Google Play for Android devices, they’ve got access to their very own 3D dinosaur. And one of the unique features of the Dinosaur Discovery app is that it scales – the bigger the marker,
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the bigger the 3D dinosaur. If you use the app on the image of the Spinosaurus printed on the full height of the glass entry at the front of the WA Museum, you will see a giant, moving roaring dinosaur leap out at you. If you use it on the same image printed on these pages, you’ll get your very own Iconsized 3D dinosaur. And if you use it on your ticket for the exhibition, you’ll get a tiny 3D dinosaur you can hold in your hand. Dinosaur Discovery: Lost Creatures of the Cretaceous has been developed by the WA Museum in partnership with Goldie Marketing, an Australian development and manufacturing company. The exhibition is open to the public at the Western Australian Museum – Perth from April 11 until August 3, 2014. For more information, visit: http://museum.wa.gov.au/ museums/perth/dinosaur-discovery-perth
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