CANBERRA Museum and Gallery will open a new interactive gallery on London Circuit.

The work of leading Australian industrial designer Ian Wong, from Monash University, the corner gallery’s first exhibition is taking shape, behind the brightly painted hoarding that covers construction on the corner of London Circuit and Civic Square, where a resin floor has been poured and track-lighting installed. 

Rebecca Richards, assistant director exhibitions and collections at the CMAG, tells me the new interactive gallery is part of a process of “connecting us with Civic Square”. 

It will be a 24-hour experience if viewed from the street, but the actual entrance will be through the foyer. 

“We wanted to open up CMAG to public view,” Richards says. 

“We wanted to be more collaborative, so we commissioned a transitional project space that lends itself to moving images, large-scale sculptures and new technologies, expanding the footprint of CMAG.”

It differs from the window gallery on Civic Square, where Karena Keys’ exhibition “Wanna Sip” is now on show”, for which expressions of interest are sought from various artists. The new one will be curated by the gallery itself. 

It was Dr Wong who approached CMAG when he heard of the new space, and this first exhibition will be called “Light, Colour and Humanity”, in homage to the memory of the late Canberra architect Alastair Swayn, who edited a famous book of the same name.

Less than loving to a designer, the space has the disadvantage of having a lift shaft right in its middle, but Richards says optimistically, that it will “allow a special little area so that we can configure the galleries as we want them.”

Once up and running, there will be decals on the windows and digital screens so passers-by can see what’s happening at night. 

The opening exhibition, following Swayn’s own philosophy, will seek to find beauty in everyday functional objects, designed but usually overlooked, as with the yellow stack hats, an Australian design from the ’80s, which will feature in the opening exhibit and which, like humdrum objects such as traffic buttons/buzzers, demand a new look.

Central to the exhibit will be four light cubes, two-metre by two metre designed by Wong and lit from within, each containing questions for onlookers such as: “I am always sharp, what am I?”

The new gallery will be called “CMAG on the Square” and will involve a rigorous curated exhibition program, Richards says, probably focusing on large-scale installation artworks. 

CMAG, Richards is quick to note, caters to different audiences through different exhibitions. The open collection where people can display their own collections, for instance, is perennially popular and receives submissions continuously from avid collectors. 

But the new gallery will be totally different from that, involving augmented reality, interactive questions about how cities work, touchscreens to attract children and pose even a riddle or two.

In short, Richard says, the new space will say loud and clear: “We are here”.

As part of the Enlighten Festival CMAG will open from 5pm-8pm with “Light, Colour, Cocktails”, March 17 and 18.