Gwangju Biennale – Gwangju, South Korea

2014 – Built

The Gwangju Biennale is Asia’s most important contemporary arts festival.  Our exhibition design required close collaboration with the curatorial team and over 100 participating artists and galleries in order to provide an effective space for the installation and display of artworks of varying scale and diverse media.

The layout of the exhibition was integrated within the biennale halls (over 5,000 sqm of space), and embeded the building’s existing columns within the structure of the temporary walls, thus achieving a bold tectonic presence that is further emphasised by the strong proportions of the apertures and thresholds into the gallery spaces.  Through this, the design created a sense of permanence and solidity to the exhibition that belied its flexible and modular nature, thus responding to the Biennale’s curatorial theme Burning Down the House.

The smoke-motif graphics that permeated the exhibition were developed with the commissioned artists El Ultimo Grito.  This marked an ambitious and significant departure from the ‘white cube’ convention for the display of modern and contemporary art, and required skilful refinement to meet the requirements of the artists whose work would be shown in this context. 

The exhibition furniture was a flexible, modular system that could be readily adapted for the various exhibition spaces to provide a range of viewing environments.  The design was been carefully developed so that the furniture would be suitably distinct from the wall graphics, yet visually harmonious through the use of colour.

Working closely with the biennale’s curator Jessica Morgan, Delvendahl Martin were responsible for the overall exhibition design as well as the detailed coordination of site specific installations by artists Urs Fischer,  Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Carsten Höller.

Image: Huma Mulji, Ode to a Tubelight and Memory of a Pink, Gwangju Biennale (2014), image © Stefan Altenburger

Project Team
Hannah Wilson

Contractor
KL Co Ltd

 

Structural Engineer
Michael Hadi Associates

Artists (smoke-motif wall graphics)
El Ultimo Grito

Curatorial Team
Jessica Morgan
Emiliano Valdes
Fatos Ustek
Enna Bae
Teresa Kittler