Playful spaces to quiet awe – Tamsin Cull unpacks the wonder behind GOMA’s newest exhibition
Wonder can be monumental – a towering sculpture or a room bursting with colour – but it also hides in quiet details, waiting to be noticed. GOMA’s latest free exhibition, Wonderstruck, celebrates both. With more than 100 works across six themed chapters, it invites visitors to pause, play and rediscover the joy of looking closer. As head of public engagement at QAGOMA and co-curator of Wonderstruck, Tamsin Cull has spent over two decades creating experiences that connect people of all ages with art in playful and powerful ways. Since joining the gallery in 2002, she’s worked with more than 100 artists and helped shape many of its most loved interactive programs. With Wonderstruck now underway, we spoke to Tamsin about creating the exhibition, curating for curiosity and why wonder still matters – perhaps now more than ever.
Wonderstruck brings together over 100 works across six themed chapters. How did you and co-curator Laura Mudge approach shaping the structure of the exhibition? What influenced the way you grouped and arranged the works?
We have worked together for more than ten years on dozens of Children’s Art Centre projects and exhibitions, and the broader Public Engagement team also works on programming for adults, so Laura and I were excited to have the opportunity to develop a major exhibition, drawing on the Collection and also past interactive projects originally developed as collaborations between the Children’s Art Centre and contemporary artists. A number of thematic groupings developed organically out of the broader idea of wonder. For example, the theme of ‘Flight’ emerged out of ‘Natural Wonder’, and we were able to be quite playful with this. We extended the grouping, that was initially artworks relating to birds, to include the swarm of planes in Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’s ‘In-flight (Project: Another Country)’ and the playful work of UK artist Hetain Patel who has photographed children taking on the personas of superheroes, defying gravity in a way we mere mortals can’t.
The Wonderstruck theme suggests that ‘wonder’ isn’t just found in grand, awe-inspiring moments – it can also emerge from mundane, everyday encounters. How did you strike a balance between spectacle and subtlety across the exhibition?
Because they evoke wonder in ways that sit perfectly within the exhibition’s thematic groupings, we wanted to include audience favourite artworks, like Ron Mueck’s monumental hyper-real sculpture ‘In bed’ in our ‘Extraordinary within the Ordinary’ chapter. We also wanted to include works that audiences might be less familiar with, like Yuken Teruya’s breathtakingly delicate trees cut from paper shopping bags, and small treasures such as two groups of exquisite brooches by local Brisbane jeweller Barbara Heath. We’ve recontextualised the works in ways we hope will surprise and delight our audiences, working closely with our brilliant exhibition designers to provide moments of high impact as well as opportunities for quiet contemplation, sometimes in quick succession.
Some works invite visitors to physically contribute, while others reward slow, quiet observation. How did you approach pacing and flow across the exhibition space, and how important was it to design an experience that invites both play and pause?
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The exhibition is centred on the audience experience and revolves around the idea that wonder occurs within us when we remain receptive and open to the world around us. We want to take people on a journey, where they can be transported through looking, but we have also integrated opportunities to get hands-on with participatory artworks. We know our audiences are excited that we’re presenting a new iteration of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s ‘The Obliteration Room’, a work that has gone viral on social media and travelled the world to be seen by over five million people. It was first created in collaboration with the Queensland Art Gallery in 2002 and is now part of our Collection.
Wonder is something we all experience, but often in very different ways. How did you consider different age groups or life experiences in shaping how people might connect with the works?
While the way we experience wonder can vary from person to person, there are certain things that might be considered universal in the ways they spark wonder – appealing to people of all ages and diverse life experience, and we’ve included many such works. These include Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s ambitious geometric mirror mosaic made up of 4000 small pieces that reflect a fragmented version of the viewer; and Patricia Piccinini’s ‘The Observer’, a hyper real sculpture of a small child teetering atop a tall stack of chairs, which evokes in us a sense of awe at the child’s vulnerability and daring. Throughout the exhibition, rather than having separate labels for children and adults, we’ve included accessible hybrid wall labels, written to provide entry points into the works for audiences of all ages.
What role do you think wonder and imagination play in how we experience art, especially for children and families?
Being in a state of play can open us up to new ways of seeing and thinking, and it also provides opportunities for connecting with other people. We see this when we watch children play, but it’s true for adults too. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi who became famous for naming the psychological state of ‘flow’ said, “Without awe life becomes routine … try to be surprised by something every day. Try to surprise at least one person every day.” We hope that ‘Wonderstruck’ will spark joy in people, through works like Pip and Pop’s portals into the glittery ‘Rainbow bridge’ and the American artist Nick Cave’s colourful raffia Soundsuits, ‘HEARD’; and hopefully, after experiencing the exhibition, people will take a little bit of the magic out of the Gallery, and keep experiencing wonder in the world around them.
Is there a particular work in Wonderstruck that holds special meaning for you – one that you find yourself returning to, or that continues to reveal something new each time you see it?
Soon after I first started working at the Gallery, in the early 2000s, Sandra Selig’s ethereal ‘Mid-air’ work came into the Collection, and it’s a thrill to see it in our ‘Intangible: Sacred and Sublime’ chapter. The work is made of nylon thread and Styrofoam balls constructed in tubes that meet at right angles, creating a sense of negative and positive space dissolving into each other as you move beneath the work. This was one of the first works installed in the show; so in recent weeks, I’ve found myself often drawn into the space, standing under it and appreciating the energy of the work.
What does ‘wonder’ mean to you personally and when was the last time you were wonderstruck?
Like many people my age, I’m a busy working parent, and I’m doing my best not to miss the wonder in the ordinary, everyday. Often these are the little moments with my children, whether it be sharing in the discovery of a paper wasp nest in the garden or watching them fly through the air in a graceful gymnastics or dance move. Because I’ve never had any flair for creative movement or acrobatics myself, witnessing these feats – not unlike those captured by Hetain Patel in our ‘Flight’ section – is doubly wonderous to me.
What do you hope first-time visitors will take away from Wonderstruck? Is there a particular kind of response you’re hoping to spark?
We’re hoping people will be lit up and energised by the artworks they see. Life and the state of the world can feel overwhelming, especially at the moment. Finding wonder isn’t about avoiding reality, it’s about tuning in, about connecting with ourselves, each other, and nature, and appreciating what’s in front of us. One of the last works you’ll encounter in the exhibition, Madeleine Kelly’s whimsically colourful ‘Spectra of Birds’, invites us to marvel at the many extraordinary species of birds we might see if we look closely enough; and perhaps if we stop to notice them, we’ll care enough to do something about protecting the planet that we – people and animals – all share.
Visit Wonderstruck at GOMA from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm daily. The free exhibition runs until Monday October 6.