Saturday, June 14, 2008

PROJECT 3: Art Gallery - Brief Look at Culture

To have a better understanding of the site, a brief look at the suburb’s background is necessary…
Newtown is a suburb packed with a diversity of cultures and is highly described as conveying a bohemian ambience.

The north end of King St (where my site is located), past Newtown railway station, is the busier part of the street. Apart from the traffic jams and heavy foot traffic, commercially, there is an abundance of restaurants, cafés and fashion retailers (Highly appropriate and suitable for this project).

There is an Aboriginal history also attached to Newtown’s past and culture. The street allegedly follows an ancient Aboriginal track that branched out from the main western track, now beneath Broadway and Parramatta Road, and which extended all the way to Botany Bay’s shores. This strong reference to Aboriginal history has led me to want to represent it - “glorify” it so to speak.

Housing was also constructed in an ‘Art Deco’ style:
- Structure based on mathematical geometric shapes.
- Materials: aluminium, stainless steel, lacquer, inlaid wood.
- Buildings were straight white-rendered house frontages rising to flat roofs.
- Celebrated the Machine Age via the use of man-made materials, symmetry, repetition, Asian influences.
- Noted for its ‘simplicity’ and ‘practicality’.

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