History comes alive with the help of virtual reality technology at Darwin’s Chinese Museum, in a significant collection rehang and update.
In September this year, the Northern Territory (NT) Chinese Museum installed a virtual reality display which constituted the first significant rehang for the institution in over a decade. It is the first revamp since 2007, notwithstanding the updating of ‘family tree scrolls’ in 2010, is designed to ‘bring the attention of the museum to a wider audience’ and ‘provide a post-COVID reboot.’
At the centre of this reboot is the new exhibition, Family Murmurings: Fragments of Australian Chinese Life, which also signals a change of direction in museum programing through the introduction of contemporary art.
Resident historian at the NT Chinese Museum, Neville Jones, said: ‘[The] paintings are inspired by the short stories written by Kenneth Chan… [and] the viewer can don 3D goggles and take a virtual reality step into the paintings.’
The nine vibrant vignettes and virtual environments immerse viewers in the childhood recollections of the author. Aspects of Sydney during the 1950s and 1960s are vividly recreated in his modern tales, illustrated by the visual artist Nancy Liang, and modelled by digital artist Oliver Clifton.
Dr Kenneth Chan was born in a foreign occupied Shanghai, to a Chinese Australian father who had emigrated from Darwin in 1928. His family operated a general store and tailoring business on Cavenagh Street, in Darwin’s Chinatown, prior to its demise in the 1942 bombings. Through the nine short stories represented in this exhibition, Dr Chan attempted to capture the ‘essence’ of growing up both ‘Chinese and Australian’ in a White Australia, which favoured the quiet assimilation of its migrants.
While turning to VR has been a new venture for Dr Chan, he has long been interested in cross-cultural storytelling and history. Before Dr Chan undertook a creative writing course at the University of Canberra, he was a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, a diplomat and the Administer of the Cocos Islands.
Credited Source
ArtsHub / Pamela See
