Beyond Boundaries: an exhibition that invites visitors to touch, smell and taste the artwork!

Art galleries often carry a standard code of behaviour: ‘Don’t touch the artwork’.

Not so at Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery, where a new exhibition not only allows visitors to touch, smell and even taste the artwork – they’re encouraged to do so.

Beyond Boundaries: Sensory Relationships with the Environment invites visitors into a multi-sensory world where they can encounter art with all their senses ­– sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

The exhibition includes touchable works. And in keeping with the exhibit’s focus on accessibility, many of its labels are in braille, languages other than English and some works are available in audio.

Launching the exhibition this week, Maroondah Mayor Councillor Rob Steane said Beyond Boundaries celebrated the diversity of Maroondah’s artistic community, as well as the broader community.

“Beyond Boundaries is a multi-sensory exhibition by diverse artists whose cross-disciplinary artworks communicate the artists’ unique relationship with the environment. Artists, from Maroondah and beyond, invite the community to explore artworks, which collectively elicit responses from all five human senses,” Cr Steane said.

“Beyond Boundaries showcases Indigenous artists; artists who arrived here after long journeys; and artists who have always called Australia home. The exhibition also includes artists who are living with a disability and those who deeply challenge the fundamentally dominant perceptions of how society sees them,” he said.

Artworks include sculptures and a possum skin cloak by members of the Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place; and an immersive environment created by Zetta Kanta and Simon York that encourages visitors to look, listen, touch and smell.

Lino plates and 3D prints by Christine Scott Vincent; wearable art be Grace Van Thang and a metallic sculpture by Ciara Glover invite visitors to look and touch.

A spoken word performance by Amanda Marx allows visitors to look and listen, and a library created in collaboration with Vision Australia offers visitors the opportunity to touch braille, sight text or listen to the narratives of the many ways of seeing the environment.

Edit Andrej’s edible sculpture, with its takeaway bites, tempts visitors to look, touch, smell, and taste.

“This accessible exhibition normalises difference through embracing diversity. Information is provided in Mizo, Hungarian, Estonian and English text along with Braille and audio,” Cr Steane said.

“Beyond Boundaries embraces an audience which includes, but is also beyond, the dominant gallery viewer,” he said.

When: open until Friday 24 May 2019 Where: Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery, 32 Greenwood Avenue, Ringwood.