Jumping the Written Text: the Burlganyja Wanggaya Interactive Exhibition
Mary Anne Jebb and Malcolm Allbrook, Centre for Indigenous History, ANU
Burlganyja Wanggaya, an award winning permanent exhibition which opened in Carnarvon, Western Australia, early in 2012, is the result of a collaboration between the curators and members of five Indigenous cultural groups in the Gascoyne region. They were keen to see an exhibition that told their history and displayed their culture in ways that conformed to their own cultural milieu, emphasising the spoken word, images, sound and film over written text. The role of the curators thus included the orthodox – historical research, sourcing objects, images and film – but sought to ‘jump over the written text’ by using innovative technologies to create a space in which culture and history is displayed as living, breathing and vibrant.