Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War – First Look

Friday, 17 April 2015, 1:13 pm
Article: Francis Cook

Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War – First Look

Te Papa today allowed media access to their new exhibition Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War. The exhibition was created with help from Weta Workshop to deliver an immersive, realistic and even disorienting experience.

24,000 hours of labour and $8 million went into the project, and the most painstaking work shows on the “hyper-real” sculptures at 2.4 times human scale. The sculptures are based upon real men who fought in Gallipoli, and are surrounded by screens with images from their personal diaries.

Descendants were invited to view the exhibition this morning and many were overwhelmed with emotion. The models have been created with absolute realism as the target, down to whether the men had varicose veins or tattoos.

The space has a labyrinth-like feel to it, with curved walls and winding paths deliberately constructed to maximise the small space and to create a sense of disorientation and removal from everyday life.

Creative Director Sir Richard Taylor stated that he wanted the space to feel confusing and chaotic to reflect the lack of order in war. He and lead curator Kirstie Ross decided the remove the curator from the narrative, and instead use first person accounts of the soldiers and nurses which can be seen and heard all around the exhibition.

Sir Richard Taylor and Kirstie Ross describe the level of detailing that went into the modelling.

Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War opens April 18 and will run for four years.

ENDS

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Francis Cook

Reporter

Francis studied History, gaining a first class honours in 2014. He is interested in politics, music and popular culture. His thesis looked at nuclear themes in Japanese film history.

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