The NGV’s Open House: Tromarama for Kids is wonderfully creative, loads of fun and sure to delight children and adults alike with it’s quirky invitation to play.  The Open House is where play and art unite, encouraging children and inspiring families to express their creativity and have a go at being artists themselves.

When:  23 May – 18 October 2015, open 10am–5pm  Closed Tuesday (exc. public holidays)

Where: NGV International, Ground Level, 180 St Kilda Rd, MELBOURNE

Cost: FREE

Thank you to our wonderful guest reviewer Sally T. Ridden and her mini reviewer for this fabulous review and photos.

NGV for Kids

Indonesian contemporary art collective Tromarama, comprised of three artist friends, have built a house featuring five fully-furnished rooms including: kitchen, dining room, courtyard, bedroom and bathroom.  Only thing is, this house is far from typical – for starters it’s been built inside the children’s galleries at NGV International.  And you are invited to play inside the immersive house where ordinary household objects come to life in extraordinary and playful ways, to tell stories based on non-stop video animation, sound and installation.

The Open House where play and art unite, encouraging children and inspiring families to express their creativity and have a go at being artists themselves.

Venture through each of the familiar domestic interiors to experience participatory multimedia elements of contemporary culture. The pre-recorded 4 minute videos with a ‘kidult’ approach are the result of hundreds of hours of work and thousands of objects creating complex stop-motion animation films.

To enhance the interactive children’s imaginative experiences Tromarama collaborated with the NGV to develop Tromaramix – a new stop motion app for use within the exhibition as well as home.  In the Bathroom a large cast of toys and objects can be selected from within a white wash-lit bath and taken over to individual stop-motion filming booths both in the Bathroom and the Bedroom to create their own stop-motion animation videos, which can then be emailed or shared with friends and family.

[editors note: The Meetoo mini reviewers had loads of fun with the Tromaramix, here is one of their creations.]

Also featured in the bathroom is a real toilet with a “whole lotta” toilet roll overhead. (The toilet lid must’ve been lifted at least 50 times in the 20 minutes I was in the room!). The bedroom has a big centred bed the kids all loved to climb up and onto.

In the courtyard Nothing Is What It Seems.  A large-scale feature wall of colourful flowers frames a video which compellingly captures time passing where fresh flowers bloom and die revealing the video’s title phrase in artificial blooms. Children can record their own voice with familiar garden features such as a gnome, drain pipes and a tree stump repeating and “chatting back”, even a yapping dog in its dog house that lights up, all blurring the lines of artificiality and reality.

Next, experience dancing on the ceiling in the upside down dining room, with tables and chairs suspended from the roof.  Neon lit disco dance-floor and complementing visual soundtracks, can at first seem scary to a child but then proves impossible for them to want leave.  Even the shoes came off for full sock effect.

In the kitchen a film features audacious cups, mugs and plates abandoning their dull lives in the kitchen cupboard, in search of adventure. The bolted and glued stacked crockery has its own story to tell in reflection of the artists missing their play-time.

The Open House is an extraordinary and a playful introduction for our next generation into the world of contemporary art. Go experiment, explore, create and share with new technologies.

Sally’s notes:

• Free Entry
• Child Friendly
• Underground Car Park
• Plenty of Public Transport options

Created by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans and Ruddy Hatumena, this exhibition builds on the huge success of  recent children’s exhibition Express Yourself! Romance Was Born for Kids, which attracted 85,000 children to NGV International’

Generously supported by The Dewhurst Family. The NGV Kids program is supported by the Truby & Florence Williams Charitable Trust.