SENSUAL Exhibition Open Call 

We are inviting project submissions for Science Gallery Melbourne's upcoming exhibition, SENSUAL. This form has 32 fields in total and will take approximately 30 minutes to an hour to complete. If you have any questions about the application process, please reach out to us via email at info@melbourne.sciencegallery.com

This open call will close on Thursday 30 April, 11:59pm (UTC, Coordinated Universal Time).  

• London time: Thursday 30 April, 11:59pm
• Bengaluru time: Friday 1 May, 5:29am
• Monterrey time: Thursday 30 April, 5:59pm
• Melbourne time: Friday 1 May, 9:59am

Exhibition description and sub-themes

SENSUAL

Sweet, smoky, sour scents. Soft, slimy, sticky, and soothing sensations. 

Experience seeps in through the senses. 

Amidst the present onslaught of surreal visual information, tune into physicality as an antidote. We can distinguish flavours and smells. Feel temperature, texture, pressure and vibration. We know when we are in pain, off-balance, or dancing to a rhythm. Ensembles of sensory neurons are constantly channelling information to our brains for processing. This exhibition seeks to tweak the sensorial streams we are tuning into, shifting the mix to amplify palpable qualities of perception. It’s getting harder to believe what we see, so how can we build trust in what we feel?

Out of sight, out of mind, and into the body – come together and probe the rich sensory layer between our inner world and the external environment. 

We are looking for participatory, experiential and experimental projects from across disciplines that explore the senses beyond sight. 

Subthemes include (but are not limited to):

• Sensory modalities beyond sight (i.e. smell, taste, touch, hearing, pain, proprioception, interoception and more)
• Human and non-human perception 
• Embodiment 
• Lived experiences of differences in sensory perception (Blindness, d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing, anosmia, ageusia, somatosensory loss, synaesthesia)
• Collective sense-making and exploration
• Phenomenology
• Psychedelics 
• Information processing
• Sensory augmentation with technology
• Biomimicry
• Pheromones 
• First Nations knowledge and cultural perspectives in relation to the exhibition themes

Some considerations:

This open call invites you to propose installations and research projects that can operate in a shared-space group exhibition context in a non-traditional gallery environment, where the light and sound conditions aren’t constant. Projects selected via our open call are generally funded for up to $8000 AUD (Australian dollars), which includes all fees, materials, freight, and other project costs. Please note that this is a maximum amount, not a target amount. Unfortunately, at this stage, we are usually not able to include travel costs in this budget. These projects will be open to the public for approximately ten months attended by upwards of 30,000+ people, with a focus on 15–30-year olds. We value projects that are simple in their invitation, opening the door for complex debate and ongoing enquiry. We love projects that are iterative, interactive, contribute to genuine research and that are interdisciplinary. We love humour, provocation, speculation, and irreverent ideas that entertain people first and then educate them. The project you propose can be a new idea, in-development or evolved for another presentation or existing works that are ready to go.