Exhibitions

Celebrating 40 years of 2SER 107.3, the community radio station jointly owned by UTS and Macquarie University, this interactive exhibition delved into the rich and vibrant history of the station’s past four decades of broadcast.

2SER (Sydney Educational Radio) launched to the public on 1 October 1979. Over 40 years, the station has grown in size and scope while aiming to represent Sydney as much as possible. 2SER has been a space for learning and innovation throughout its existence - at the forefront of social change, pioneering music scenes, creating award winning documentaries, and training thousands of journalists and other media professionals.

To present this multi-layered history, 2SER conducted 40 original interviews with some of the key players from the station’s past. The exhibition presented these interviews along with a plethora of stories, images, and artefacts from 2SER’s archives.

To mark the opening of the new UTS Blake Library in UTS Central, November 2019, this exhibition celebrated the completion of the UTS City Campus Master Plan  by looking back at the history of our precinct and the architectural accomplishments of the past decade. The exhibition showcased the complexity and significance of the UTS City Campus Master Plan through historical artifacts, photographs, plans, videos, architectural processes, and models.

The exhibition follows the journey of the campus redevelopment, from its announcement in 2008 on UTS’s 20th anniversary, to the realisation of the university’s vision for a world-leading campus at the gateway to downtown Sydney. The campus has evolved strategically in conjunction with, and was one of the catalysts for, the City of Sydney’s development of the wider precinct, creating a connected campus with immediate links to industry and the community. Celebrating the development of six distinctive UTS buildings including the newly completed UTS Central, as well as underground sporting facilities, and a network of revitalised learning and social spaces.

This UTS Library exhibition, curated by UTS and Western Sydney University, celebrated 2019: The International Year of Indigenous Languages, raising awareness of and promoting the preservation and complexity of the hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. The exhibition spotlighted language projects by members of First Peoples communities in Australia, as well as other researchers from universities around Australia. It introduced visitors to traditional spoken, sign and song languages through objects, documents and interactive multimedia as well as presenting ongoing efforts to reawaken ‘sleeping’ languages of our region.

The exhibition inaugurated the immersive virtual reality experience, Barrawao, created in a creative co-design partnership between academics, artists and designers, including both settler-Australians and members of First Peoples communities. In this experience, the viewer directs a self-guided virtual tour across nura (country) to hear traditional languages spoken, whilst simultaneously gaining insight into the connection between language and nura.
 

Coinciding with Sydney Writers' Festival, UTS Library and Vertigo Magazine teamed up to develop the first rendition of a Vertigo exhibition. On display was a selection of creative writing and poetry works from 2019’s first volume, alongside student-made artworks submitted for the exhibition that respond to the theme of ‘disrupt’.

In line with the Vertigo creative team’s vision for this year, Disrupt presents a selection of work that explores the unusual and the overlooked. As an extension of this volume, the exhibition includes artworks exploring unsettling themes such as: pain, anxiety, isolation, surveillance, resistance, depression, desire, loss and the uncanny.

A poetry reading was held at the exhibition closing event, where an amazing line up of student poets and writers responded to the theme of "disruption."

As part of Sydney Design Festival 2019, UTS Library in collaboration with the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building (DAB) presented an exhibition that showcased the outcomes and speculations of the Transformative Technologies + Data Poetics (TT+DP) group. The TT+DP research group are a multi-disciplinary collection of designers and makers operating in and around emerging technologies in architecture, visual communication design, and data visualisation.

Through their explorations in visualisations of complex data, mixed reality and automation within the building and construction industry, this exhibition illustrates how new technologies are enabling more inclusive design and review processes within various fields. Over the past months, TT+DP have developed two distinct projects that comparably use new technologies to assist complex ideas in becoming more accessible: Adrift, a data visualisation project that uses citizen science to collect data to map ocean microbes and Structural Hybrid, a real-world testing of robotic fabrication machinery to manufacture a complex structure.

As a part of Sydney Craft Week 2018, UTS Fashion and Textile practice-based academics, Cecilia Heffer, Armando Chant and Donna Sgro exhibited the collaborations they had undertaken exploring contemporary embroidery forms with master artisans from India.

The works on display, although diverse in content, spoke of the strong cross-cultural relationship between the UTS Fashion and Textiles program and master embroiderers from India. The partnership was initially established by Julie Lantry, Director of Artisan Culture, with the development of the Global Studio program for UTS Fashion and Textiles students and is now extended upon by the three exhibiting artists.

The Magic Pudding is an iconic Australian children’s story, written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay in 1918. The Magic Pudding is Norman Lindsay’s first and best-known children’s book and its legacy continues today as explored in the exhibition. After 100 years the book has never been out of print and has been translated into many other languages, interpreted into musical and theatrical productions, and an animated film. The exhibition featured items from the UTS Library collection including monographs, journals, manuscripts, audio-visual materials, ephemera, and toys.

In conjunction with National Science Week 2018, this exhibition showcased student projects from UTS Animal Logic Academy's initial two years, including an animation, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences , and the PhD research project of Simon Rippingale.

Animal Logic Academy (ALA) is a unique collaboration between UTS and Animal Logic – a world-leading creative animation and production studio. UTS ALA offers the first industry-led postgraduate degree of its kind in Australia - a Master of Animation and Visualisation (MAV) - and practice-based PhD research opportunities.

2017 MAV graduates: Carol Amadio, Daniel Baird, Halil Basiacik, Andrew Battye, Hannah Chu , Emma Cooney, Jessica D’Ali, Aaron De Leon, Alejandro Garrido, Alessandra Grasso, Akishi Ling, Ravi Naidoo, Mai Pham, Ben Streek, Grace Testa, Laurie Wu, Ding Yu, Jason Zhao.

UTS Library proudly showcased four video campaigns by students from the Bachelor of Design in Visual Communications program as part of the D&AD New Blood Awards.

The D&AD New Blood program is open to students, recent graduates, and aspiring creatives 18-24 years of age and aims to help young designers launch their careers. The New Blood Awards receive entries from over 40 countries with a highly competitive judging process determining prize-winners, who can receive a Wood, Graphite, Yellow, White or Black Pencil. Taking home a Yellow Pencil is considered a highpoint of any career, not only for the prestige of the award but for the professional advancement and opportunities that come with it.

In 2017, UTS students Annabel Cook, Lina Lindberg and Samson Ossedryver won a Yellow Pencil for their campaign Down to Business. Up to No Good. In 2018, two UTS Visual Communication student teams were awarded 3 pencils at the D&AD New Blood awards ceremony in London. The Dirty received a Yellow and White Pencil and Stack received a Graphite Pencil.

Just Spaces presents the work of UTS Master of Design graduate Ella Cutler. This body of work emerged from Ella’s thesis research into the microaggressions experienced by Lesbian, Bisexual, Pansexual and Queer (LBPQ) women and non-binary identities in their everyday lives, and how she as a designer can help facilitate and imagine safe spaces for this community.

On display were a series of works on paper that respond to two workshops facilitated by Ella, in which a group of LBPQ identifying people were asked to imagine and plan new safe spaces for the future, for them and their community. The series of six double-sided risograph prints are Ella’s visual translations of the stories, anecdotal data, and the solutions that the workshop participants offered. Workshop outcomes included the necessity for safe spaces to be: for all (identities and sexualities), accessible, inclusive of narratives so they become culturally accepted, maintained and committed to by everybody, educative, equipped with medical and counselling facilities, and to be everywhere.