Beci Orpin—Through the Streets of Your Town
Geelong Gallery has unveiled a playful new look for its Learn Space, a bright, hands-on installation created by artist and designer Beci Orpin.
Beci Orpin—Through the Streets of Your Town is inspired by the bold colours, signage and layered meanings in Janenne Eaton: Lines of Sight—Frame and Horizon. Orpin’s design invites us to think about how we navigate the spaces around us and the hidden and explicit rules that guide our adventures through life.
Drawing on Eaton’s visual language and concepts, Orpin has created a joyful and thought-provoking space that encourages curiosity, creativity and open-ended play. It’s a family-friendly extension of the Gallery’s major exhibition—designed to spark imagination and encourage all ages to see the familiar in new ways.
The space is free and open until 17 August.
Of the space she designed, Beci Orpin said: ‘I’ve always wanted to make work based around street signs and place finding, and following themes from Janenne’s exhibition gave me the perfect opportunity. Even though these themes can seem big and serious, I loved being able to draw on them and translate them for a younger audience. Kids are aware of the world and I think it’s important to discuss bigger issues with them in an everyday and non-scary manner. I hope the messages conveyed are both fun and thought-provoking.’
Geelong Gallery Director & CEO Humphrey Clegg said: ‘Kids and families bring life and energy to galleries which are often thought to be quiet and restrictive spaces. So Geelong Gallery is delighted to celebrate this vitality through Beci Orpin’s wonderful response to Janenne Eaton’s exhibition. Don’t miss this fun way to share art with your family!’
About Janenne Eaton: Lines of Sight—Frame and Horizon
Janenne Eaton is an eminent Australian artist whose work is critically engaged with some of the most pressing humanitarian and cultural debates shaping our lives today. Eaton’s paintings and installations explore environmental, historical, and political concerns, and the impact of a globalised, digital ecology on the individual, on communities, and on Nature. Eaton’s powerful images contemplate some of the intangible complexities of the human condition and incorporate some of the key signifiers of our consumer-led, information-obsessed society to make searingly critical commentary on how we live and human beings’ changing relationship to time, space, and place.
Geelong Gallery is delighted to present the first major survey of Janenne Eaton’s extraordinary practice, through works spanning more than four decades.
