MPavilion closes after attracting more than 64,000 visitors to 317 free events over four months

The inaugural MPavilion, Australia's newest temporary pavilion designed by renowned architect Sean Godsell, closed on 1 February 2015 after collaborating with 200 artists, musicians, designers and thought activists to attract over 64,000 visitors to 317 free events since opening on 7 October 2014.

MPavilion transformed Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens into an engaging cultural hub, its free public program featuring 26 talks, 36 music performances, 28 public workshops, 16 educcational events and 15 visual artists.

The temporary artspace represented the first in a major new series of annual architecture commissions and design events initiated by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. It is the result of a landmark public/private four-year partnership between the Foundation and the City of Melbourne, along with the Victorian State Government and Australia Council.

The Sean Godsell-designed MPavilion has been gifted by the Foundation to the City of Melbourne and will be relocated to a site within the City precinct, to be announced April 2015.

MPavilion presents fast-paced 12-hour intellectual relay of ideas in celebration of final weekend

Melburnians are invited to MRelay, a 12-hour talkfest and conversation relay on Saturday 31 January in which some of the country's most insightful thinkers will engage in rapid exchanges of ideas. The free event will run from 11am until 11pm on the last Saturday of the four-month long presentation of the inaugural MPavilion, located in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens. Visitors can either join the full day or drop in to see individual speakers in a series of talks and short interviews.

The 12-hour marathon event is based around four tenets. The first, Paviliions, considers pavilions as architectural interventions or places of sociocultural transformation, and features speakers such as designer of current MPavilion Sean Godsell. The second, Intimate Publics, explores connectivity in the public realm and will be hosted by actress, comedian and radio presenter Jane Kennedy. The third, Dreaming, contemplates the role of imagination in space habitation, and is led by soprano, actor and composer Deborah Cheetham.  Full details of the MRelay program are available here.

Five metre high Buddha sculpture created from 20 tonnes of incense ash under construction at Carriageworks

Sydney Buddha under construction today - the final compacting of ash and the beginnings of aluminium casing removal.

In association with Sydney Festival, Carriageworks is currently preparing to present the largest installation ever created for Australia by internationally acclaimed artist Zhang Huan. Sydney Buddha comprises two five-metre tall sculptures of Buddha; one created from aluminium, which acts as a mould for the second, created from 20 tonnes of ash collected from Buddhist temples in China. The ephemeral ash Buddha will gradually disintegrate over the course of the exhibition, affected by exposure to the environment.

The highly influential and provocative Chinese-born artist Zhang Huan began his career in 1990s Beijing. Sydney Buddha continues his fascination with contemporary life as he engages with rituals that are central to Buddhist, Chinese and Tibetan histories.
 

Sydney Buddha will be shown from 8 January to 15 March, 10am to 6pm at Carriageworks. Admission is free to the public. Zhang Huan will be giving a free public talk on 8 January at 4pm in the Carriageworks space.

Melbourne's MPavilion to host live design and build event with teams of local artists as part of closing week celebrations

MPavilion is celebrating its final week with a packed calendar of free public events from 27 until 31 January 2015. The week opens on 27 January with a live design and construct collaboration between Melbourne design studios Assemble, Edwards Moore and SIBLING from 10am to 1pm.  Project BLOOM is devised by RMIT Design Hub and designed by Alisa Andrasek and Jose Sanchez of the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture. 

The artists may choose to work alone or in tandem when designing and building their sculptures. BLOOM uses game-like logic to create a collective building experience. The bright-pink components when connected allow the construction of a new landscape.

BLOOM was recently exhibited at the RMIT Design Hub as part of London Design Museum’s exhibition, The Future is Here. 

This event is free to the public and will be held at MPavilion, Queen Victoria Gardens off St Kilda Rd, Melbourne.

Sydney Architecture Festival brings unbuilt architecture projects to life through virtual reality exhibition

Australia’s exhibition from the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale will be premiered in Australia as part of the 2014 Sydney Architecture Festival, which runs from 1 until 10 November 2014 at locations across greater Sydney.   Augmented Australia 1914 – 2014 is a virtual exhibition launching on the eve of the Festival and presented free of charge until 15 December 2014 at Sydney’s Customs House and experienced by downloading a free smartphone app. 

Augmented Australia 1914-2014 pushes the boundaries between architecture and technology, taking visitors on a virtual journey of 22 of Australia’s most intriguing unrealised architecture projects. It showcases 11 historical and 11 contemporary projects from around the country designed over the past one hundred years that, for various reasons, were never built.  Virtual 3D models, images, voiceovers and animations, activated by the specially designed Augmented Australia App, will bring the projects to life giving visitors a unique insight into the projects that could have been.

Varying in scale and typology, the projects include an alternative vision for the Sydney Opera House and a Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in Western Australia. Other projects include a different design for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, a new ’skin’ for Sydney’s UTS building and a different concept for the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park. Australia’s new pavilion in Venice by Denton Corker Marshall, currently under construction, also features in the exhibition.

2014 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize presented to an international artist, Natalie Guy, for the first time in its 14-year history

The 2014 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize has been awarded to an international artist for the first time since its conception in 2001. New Zealand artist Natalie Guy (pictured above) received the $15,000 main acquisitive prize for her work, Form for modern living #2, a five-kilogram bronze cast of a reworked plywood school-chair.

The Prize, Australia's pre-eminent national prize for small sculpture, and received a record number of entries this year.  Ms. Guy's sculpture was one of  45 finalists chosen from the nearly 600 works submitted.

Ms. Guy's artwork is an extension of pseudo-modernist sculptures which she began creating in 2012. It explores the nature of collection and exhibition on the public and private spheres, and is influenced by the familiarity of domestic interiors. The artwork also draws upon celebrated British sculptor Barbara Hepworth's series of Forms.

Form for modern living #2 will be acquired into Woollahra Council's permanent public collection.

Light installation to be unveiled at Sydney Architecture Festival as part of guided laneways tour

A three dimensional light installation, HEXTIC, will fascinate visitors to the Sydney Architecture Festival at Grasshopper Bar, Temperance Lane in Sydney's CBD from 1 to 10 November 2014. 

Free to the public, HEXTIC will come alive in Festival evenings, pulsating with light and responding to sound levels through embedded audio sensors that trigger dynamic images created by LED lighting. 

The installation was designed by UNSW students of the Australian School of Architecture and Design led by Dr Hank Haeusler, Rebekah Araullo and Eliot Rosenberg.

In keeping the spotlight on lane ways, a guided walking tour of Sydney's lane ways, 'Covert Connections', will be presented on Monday 3 November from 5:30pm to 8pm. Tickets are free, but bookings are required and can be made here.