Up, Down and All Around: Daniel Emma for Kids, an all-ages exhibition designed by acclaimed Australian design studio Daniel Emma (helmed by Daniel To and Emma Aiston) in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and supported by Major Partner Officeworks is coming to the NGV International Melbourne from the 2nd June to 8th October 2023!
Constituting the studio’s first ever design project created especially for children, the exhibition features iconic Daniel Emma furniture and decor, as well as experiential zones with both multimedia and hands-on design challenges that invite participants to create their very own designs and discover the role of design in the world they live in.
The exhibition is underpinned by Daniel Emma’s design ethos – that inspiration can be found all around us, in everyday items and life experiences. The exhibition activities encourage young minds to see design possibilities in unexpected places, such as food items or geometric shapes. Children can exercise their creative thinking and use their problem-solving skills when they draw new objects from plates of food, build new structures using geometric forms and imagine new images from existing shapes.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is the drawing-based activity Inspiration Train. Participants sit around an installation inspired by conveyor belt-style sushi trains that conveys a myriad of different plates of food. Inspired by the provocation – “You see a peanut; we see a table!” – young audiences are challenged to take a piece of fruit, an ice cream or a bowl of fried rice and turn it into a design drawing for a chair, a table lamp or whatever their imagination conjures.
The multimedia activity Stack a Snack explores what happens when cake ingredients are swapped out for green grass, red lava, grey concrete and more. This playful interactive activity encourages everyone to play with unexpected materials, explore the senses and make new combinations to design their very own digital layer ‘cake’.
Funny Face Maker is a hands-on activity designed by Daniel Emma especially for toddlers and young children. Kids and their families can create endless funny faces by selecting and arranging from Daniel Emma’s sets of sparkly and colourful shapes. Participants are invited to explore different feelings and facial expressions and then photograph the results.
Also for younger audiences, Build ‘Em Up invites curious minds to play, stack and build with colourful sets of upholstered geometric forms designed by Daniel Emma. Like making a house with bricks, children are challenged to design and build new objects with these spheres, rectangular prisms and cubes.
