During the first nationwide lockdown in early 2020, there was an opportunity to look at areas of the Otago Museum that could be used as touchpoints for different galleries, improving the visitor experience and encouraging visitors to explore more of the galleries.
The Beautiful Science Gallery is a space with no permanent installation, but has different installations installed throughout the year. One of my co-workers in the Science Communication team had the idea to create an exhibition around human evolution, exploring the known species of early humans. This would provide a resource for NCEA Level 3 Biology students, who have an internal on Hominin species.
My first involvement in this project was as a concept artist, showing the layout of the exhibition, information panels, and any interactives/activities for the centre of the exhibit. A unique challenge in using the Beautiful Science Gallery was that it is a venues space, which means that there can be no fixed physical installations in the gallery. This is facilitated by the Beautiful Science Gallery being equipped with projectors that project screens onto three of the four walls of the gallery. My original concept drawings included different projections and transitions between them so the exhibition would not be static.
After the proposal was approved I was moved to research, where I collaborated with my co-worker and a PhD student from the University of Otago, who assisted us as an intern. The 12 Hominin species were separated into groups of three, and other research areas such as primatology were also delegated across the three of us. The workload was varied and highly collaborative across different teams who were involved in the proofing process.
For the exhibition, we wanted a marriage of Science and the Arts, as visitors from both fields would be interested in it. We employed the help of Dunedin artist and director of the Dunedin Museum of Natural Mystery, Bruce Mahalski, to paint the remains for each species according to the fossil record. These were then photographed in high quality and edited for projection.
We drafted our research into mock information panels and worked with the Design team at Otago Museum to source appropriate imagery and arrange the panels to have a cohesive style across the separate groups of Hominins.
Our Evolutionary Past: Branches Through Time was displayed at Otago Museum before travelling to the Cromwell Museum, where the projections were printed onto display panels to mount in the gallery space.
