Deep Time Real Time: The 2025 Alastair Swayn Legacy Exhibition
25.02.2025 – 17.05.2025
Deep Time Real Time: The 2025 Alastair Swayn Legacy Exhibition explores design’s relationship to planetary systems through two opposing time scales – ‘deep time’ and ‘real-time’.
Responding to the expansive spaces of Design Hub Gallery, the exhibition features a large-scale installation – designed by architects Simulaa – containing geological and material samples with research works to visualise our relationship to time through material artefacts. Presented alongside the interactive structure are time–based creative works curated through the lens of ecology, energy, and technology.
As global citizens, we continue to struggle with reconciling geological timescales with our everyday lives that, in turn, affects our collective ability to make decisions on regenerative actions for the future. However, in utilising new technologies, we can gather, analyse and visualise data – some in real time – to better understand environmental conditions that would, otherwise, be invisible.
Deep Time Real Time is a call-to-action for the agency of citizen-led ‘time literacy’ to develop new collective societal and design methodologies to respond to the complex challenges of our planet.
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Deep Time Real Time features creative works and research from Fayen d’Evie, Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen, Alicia Frankovich, Emma Jackson, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Nicholas Mangan and Cameron Allan McKean, Joel Sherwood Spring and Simulaa.
Creative direction by Fleur Watson. Co-curated by André Bonnice, Anna Jankovic and Fleur Watson. Exhibition design by Simulaa. Graphic design by Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen. Access consultancy by Access Lab and Library (ALL).
This exhibition is produced by RMIT Culture in partnership with the RMIT School of Architecture & Urban Design and with the assistance of The Swayn Gallery of Australian Design. Find out more at alastairswaynfoundation.org. Also supported by the Victorian Government, with core specimens supplied by the State Drill Core Library.
