What is Explore Expand Exchange?

Artefact Projects have commissioned six new works by artists and designers that will bring museum displays to life by telling good stories. Visitors will stop and look at objects and displays afresh as stuffed monkeys talk about their origins, fruit machines determine whether you live or die and thumb prints become symbols of national identity. Explore Expand Exchange has been developed in collaboration with The Manchester Museum.

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The project takes place at two venues:

The Manchester Museum provides access to six million items from around the world including frogs and ancient pottery, plant, coins, beetles and armour.

The Whitworth Art Gallery is renowned for its collection of art and design, and has the largest range of textiles and wallpapers outside of London.

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Explore Expand Exchange takes place between
29 November 2003 - 29 February 2004.

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Collect 15 different Explore Expand Exchange badges and win a digital
camera worth £250!

Simply photograph yourself wearing the badges and send this photograph with an entry form to Artefact Projects.

Spot the badge dispensers amongst the Explore Expand Exchange displays. Collect an entry form from the reception area of The Manchester Museum where you fill in your contact details.

Closing date for photographs and forms: 12 March 2004
The winning entry will be drawn on 14 March 2004

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There are three projects taking place in the Wellcome Trust’s Science for Life exhibition:

From H to O
by Kuljit Chuhan
The biology of waterborne diseases is a primary area of discussion in Chuhan’s video piece, as well as the metaphors around purity and parasites. Using the idea of the fruit machine, visitors engage in a game of chance. Who will live and who will die? The audience follow their own interests through a wealth of material using nudge and spin. Ideas are presented at a range of levels including cinematic drama and interviews with professional analysts.

Face your flesh
by Sue Fox
The experience of disease is personalised and sufferers are given a voice in the discussion of their diseases by presenting a forum for reflection. Sitters have been identified for photographic portraits by using informal social and support networks rather than through professional health bodies. The photographs form a trail that is embedded within the structure of Science for Life.

Thumb Prints
by Julie Fu
Fu’s project is related to identity and hereditary background. Thumbprints have been collected, with a self-identified nationality, by stopping people in the street, visiting community centres, hospitals, clinics, schools and universities. Each thumbprint represents a unique ‘signature’. These thumbprints overlay the windows in the 'Science for Life' area. They are catalogued and grouped in a pastiche of the activity of the Museum: a visually striking patina of identity, contrasting with the relative anonymity of the surrounding exhibition. A collecting centre has been established in the museum where visitors can add their prints.

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On the first floor glass bridge at The Manchester Museum and in the foyer of the Whitworth Art Gallery:

500 Metres
by Johnny Magee
The Manchester Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery are 500 metres apart. Magee has created a cinematic narrative. He surveys the space between the buildings and the ways the collections connect whilst revealing the impenetrability of institutions. The artwork will position itself between science and art, fact and fiction, tradition and innovation. The viewer will question the veracity of the curatorial process and their interpretation of truth. The team contributing to this project includes geomantic surveyors (looking at the energy lines that connect the two) and a psycho geographer (searching for invisible connections). The finished piece is shown in both museums.

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In Animal Life at Manchester Museum:

Monkey Business
by Mil Stricevic
'Animal Life' in The Museum of Manchester is a classic example of the Victorian natural history museum exhibition style. In a 21C context, however, following the advent of the wildlife TV documentary and the various levels of 'safari' opportunity afforded by foreign travel, this collection of stuffed, lifeless animals provokes very different kinds of questions in a contemporary audience. Monkey Business is a specially commissioned audio work that allows the animals themselves to describe their experience, giving a light-hearted yet informative, multi-faceted commentary on life behind glass. Written in collaboration with the writer Kate Davis, the scripts will both draw on dialogue with and feature the voices of children from the local Pendlebury
Hospital.

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Send me a Postcard
by public works
Andreas Lang and Kathrin Boehm are making a visual representation of the programme that acts as documentation and evaluation. Accessible to both the participants and the public, Lang and Boehm are making journeys through the projects and sending back postcards. Use the Send me a Postcard link to add to the feedback.