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Tin Sheds Gallery 2022 season

18 February 2022
New exhibitions explore the radical spirit of Tin Sheds

Tin Sheds Gallery, School of Architecture, Design & Planning presents an engaging line-up of six exhibitions that delve into a range of topics including architecture, design and urbanism.

The gallery team, which include an Advisory Group selected from the disciplines of architecture, design and urbanism, under the curatorial lead and Professor of Practice Kate Goodwin, have assembled a stellar 2022 season.

The 2022 season aims to foster and advance public debate about the role of architecture, art, design and urbanism in contemporary society through the production of experimental exhibitions, publications and public programs.

The 2022 program encapsulates the creative and radical spirit that has always been the Tin Sheds with exhibitions that are the outcome of experimentation and critical research.
Kate Goodwin, Curatorial Lead Tin Sheds Gallery

The season launches on 24 February with an archive exhibition, Bill Lucas: Architect Utopian. This exhibition, which includes previously unseen archival drawings, photographs, artworks, private writings and public documents, explores the extensive archive of Bill Lucas (1924–2001), one of Sydney’s foremost late 20th century architects who was invariably ahead of his time. Jørn Utzon during a 1973 BBC television interview said that all work is purposeful and to be done “at the edge of the possible” is a concept we more readily associate with painters and sculptors, except in a rare occurrence of an architect of Bill Lucas’s vision and ability.

This year’s exhibitions and program are the result of a highly competitive open call to support a range of voices and experimentation.

Highlights include:

Art & Activism in the Nuclear Age, and a public symposium which features rarely shown artworks on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, Maralinga, Chernobyl and Fukushima, showcasing wide-ranging artistic and activist responses to the Nuclear Age;

Yanyuwa Garrwa elder Miriam Charlie’s 2015 photographic series, The Promise of Housing, a collection of portraits of Indigenous residents and their houses in the Northern Territory which will be accompanied by public talks aimed at exploring infrastructural inequalities in regional and remote communities in Australia;

SHE Robots: Tool, Toy & Companion which explores the rise of female leadership in robotics. Over the past century industrial robotics research has primarily taken place in university and military laboratories, led by male-dominated hierarchies however we are now witnessing the rise of female leadership in robotics. This exhibition looks at traditional practice, but takes a collaborative, multiple-voices approach. 

With a 50-year history as a site for radical art, design and architecture activism, the Tin Sheds Gallery is among a select few galleries around the world, such as the Canadian Centre of Architecture and the StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York, which explore topical and important issues around design and the built environment.

The Tin Sheds Gallery provides a distinctive voice and plays an integral role in the University of Sydney’s ‘cultural quarter’ which includes the Chau Chak Museum, Seymour Centre, Power Institute and the SCA and Verge galleries.

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