Peter Cripps: Projects for Two Museums opens concurrently in the University of South Australia Art Museum and the Museum of Economic Botany, Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

In each of these museums, Cripps displays a series of objects that extend and comment on the specifics of that museum, working with their particular spaces, histories and referents.

The rows of display cases in the Museum of Economic Botany, its measured nineteenth–century ambience and its collection of botanical specimens (all selected for their economic importance) evoke a classical taxonomy of knowledge and control. In this forum, Cripps’ work consists of small objects and texts positioned around, on top of and underneath the existing display, drawing out aspects of it and providing another, both literal and metaphorical level of presentation and analysis.

The more open space of the Art Museum provides a site for a parallel investigation through a sea of objects, abstracted geometric forms which immerse the viewer within the space. Though intense and questioning, Cripps’ projects still invite and provide room for the viewer.

An exhibition by the University of South Australia Art Museum and Museum of Economic Botany, Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Curated by John Barrett–Lennard. Catalogue essays by John Barrett–Lennard and Carolyn Barnes.