Louise

From the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, we move to Sarawak Museum where we are designing a gallery to exhibit the life and work of Alfred Russell Wallace whose theories about evolution pre-date Darwin's.The 'site' is in one wing of the Sarawak Museum and this temporary gallery would last 2-3 years targeted at the general public especially children.
We were interested to explore a different way of exhibiting the artifacts while keeping in view the educational intent, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

We thought to create a series of rooms using his 'moth-nets' as a homage to the man and also to prolong the journey through the relatively small space. The displays will be then printed or mounted on the 'walls' which can be actual fabric or some form of semi-rigid translucent panels.

We will design some new furniture and props to complement the existing cabinets - one of the ideas was to re-create Wallace's jungle room where the moth-nets were used. Wallace's moth-nets were essentially three bedsheets hung like a three sided room with a hurricane lamp in the middle to attract insects which, we then collected

section of the gallery

the 'walls' hover above the ground and sway gently when people walk by

view of the gallery entrance

We made a 1:50 scale cardboard model to convince the client as our scheme was 'not even close to the original brief' and thankfully it worked and our ideas were accepted.