Matrix, How We Live Now

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posted on 2025-06-12, 02:00 authored by KAREN BURNSKAREN BURNS, Sophie Adsett

Matrix: How We Live Now celebrates the social justice politics and projects of the Matrix Feminist Architectural Co-operative of 1980 – 1996. The #MeToo campaign and fourth wave feminist protests remind us that gender and equity are urgent issues of our time, with inequality and harm still present in architecture and everyday spaces.

History

Add to Elements

NTRO Output Type

Curated Exhibition, Event or Festival

NTRO Output Category

Curated Exhibition, Event or Festival : Exhibition/event

Place

Melbourne, Australia

Venue

Dulux Gallery, Glynn Davis Building, University of Melbourne

NTRO Publisher

Melbourne School of Design

Start Date

2023-09-11

End Date

2023-10-20

Medium

audio visual interviews and works on paper and models

Research Statement

This exhibition presents the radical participatory design practice of Matrix, an architectural collective active in London from 1980- 1986. It displayed a selection of curated projects with new research conducted by the curator that describes the social and political context, the client group, the level of client group participation and the feminist typology developed in the built work. Whilst a new on-line archive of Matrix projects has been developed, this exists without framing analysis or discussion of the particular socio-political context, which is the work of the Greater London Council and the Labour held boroughs of inner-city London. The exhibition developed new knowledge by explicitly describing and analysing new building types driven from feminist engagement with community. In the second room of the exhibition selected creative projects from Faculty staff and students working on research on gender and gender-non conforming subjects and subjectivities was displayed. Together the exhibition demonstrated continuities as well as differences in a longer history of work on gender, body norms and feminist pedagogy. The exhibition was described and analysed in an article by the lead researcher Dr Karen Burns in a peer-reviewed refereed international journal (Karen Burns (2024) Matrix, How We Live Now, Dulux Gallery, University of Melbourne, September 11–October 23, 2023, Fabrications, 34:2, 418-424, DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2024.2390229) and the exhibition reviewed "Review of Matrix: How We Live Now, curated by Karen Burns and Sophie Adsett, Dulux Gallery, Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, September 11–October 20, 2023." Lucy Benjamin Published online: 11 Feb 2025 Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2024.2445903

Size or Duration of Work

2 rooms of curated exhibits, displayed for 6 weeks

Affiliation

Karen Burns, University of Melbourne