HOUSE OF IDEAS 2019

The ‘house of ideas’ is our annual ‘Radical’ exhibition where we invite guest curators to curate based on their response to the Collection

The annual ‘House of Ideas’ series will commission a guest curator to use Fairhall exhibition-house as a site-specific installation space to ‘radically’ reconceptualise the exhibition-house, possibly incorporating specially made works, or loan items, for their reinterpretation.

Through this inclusive, balanced and dynamic range of exhibition programming, the Collection’s aim is to engage, inform, inspire, even bemuse existing and new audiences to consider old objects in new ways.

Since it first opened to the public in 1990, The Johnston Collection has been inviting creatives from contemporary art and design communities to create dialogues with its collection. In keeping with William Johnston's wish that Fairhall be rearranged, the Collection is guest-curated and re-imagined regularly. So like a public art gallery, its interior rooms are dedicated to regular rehangs and reinterpretations.

As such, the permanent collection is not static - with commissioned projects from invited contemporary creatives who draw on this collection, as well as creating new works based on their own practices for their installations, their reinterpretations. 

as part of the continuing ‘house of ideas’ project series