The ‘good omen' that heralded an afterlife army's arrival in Australia
Described as 'the afterlife army' of Emperor Qin Shihuang, the 8000 clay warriors stand forever to attention in a celestial military camp unearthed accidentally in 1974 by a farmer tilling his fields.
Ten of the clay army figures – eight warriors, a seated attendant and a saddled horse – now feature in Terracotta Warriors: Legacy of the First Emperor, a major exhibition of 225 objects loaned from Emperor Qin Shihuang Mausoleum Site Museum and from 17 other museums across China to the Western Australian Museum.
'We're told it's the largest exhibition of its kind outside China,' says museum director Alec Coles, whose team began discussions seven years ago with the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage, the Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum and other sites to collate Terracotta Warriors.
While Victoria has previously hosted a terracotta warrior show, Coles says the current objects – spanning a 1000-year period – have never previously been assembled in one place.
'Nearly three quarters of the objects have never been seen in Australia and we're told almost half have never before left China.'
All are genuine artefacts, from the terracotta warriors to bronze bells, jade dragon pendants and even pottery bath scrubbers. Only two life-size horse-drawn chariots are replicas because the real ones – painstakingly reassembled from fragments – are too fragile to tour.
A few items will have their first ever public showing, like an emperor dowager's gold ornaments that Perth visitors will see ahead of even the Chinese public. Some borrowed items are unlikely to travel again, like a dainty life-like swan loaned to Perth because it mirrors Western Australia's state emblem, the black swan.
'We've had a lot of license to ask for material ... I think the enduring relationship between WA and China has played a part, particularly because of the resources industry.'
WA Museum director Alec Coles
'We were desperate to get it because when the Chinese delegation came over, they were intrigued by our black swans,' says Coles.
'We took them to Perth Zoo to get an idea of Australian wildlife, and it was funny to see a black swan following us around the whole time. I think it was a good omen.'
The swan is among priceless bronze-cast waterfowl – 20 swans, 20 geese and six cranes – that were unearthed in the early 2000s with their terracotta animal handlers, whose 'serene faces and delicate hands' identify them as bird keepers.
Exhibition curator Tonia Eckfeld, a Chinese art history professor from Melbourne University, has witnessed the 'birth' of Shaanxi province's extraordinary archaeological finds.
'I've seen the objects coming out of the earth, including objects that are in this exhibition. I was doing my doctoral work in China in the 1990s when they were excavating pits of stone armour and lifting them out, 80 suits of them,' Eckfeld says.
'They had all been on wooden racks which decayed. You can imagine dealing with 600 stone pieces per suit of armour, once linked by silk thread or metal wire. So the archaeologists put stickers on each piece, with numbers, one, two, three, took them out and reassembled them.'
She says the best clues to reassembling the armour – one of which is displayed in Perth – came directly from the warrior figures.
'They bore many different configurations of armour, and so the experts were able to put the 80 suits back together.' A single magnificent suit of armour was for a horse; 'we presume it was for the horse of the emperor himself.'
The Terracotta Warriors are only one aspect of the exhibition narrative, often captured in immersive audio-visual screens – how X-rays of the bronze waterfowl revealed that China had learned from Western casting techniques.
Clues to ancient global animal trade, a warmer climate and denuded bamboo forests lie in relics of live animals that were buried in grand tombs – like ill-fated Asian tapirs, African ground hornbills and once abundant, over-grazing giant pandas.
'These objects all live in the present day,' says Eckfeld.
'They're not just old things from the past. They're very culturally alive, but they also do have a place in the present. They're part of all of our lives.'
The inner core of Emperor Qin Shihuang's tomb has never been excavated. Does Eckfeld look forward to learning its secrets?
'I'm sure that it will be excavated one day. But at the moment, I guess the fact is there's just so much else to do. Inside the core there's likely to be the most precious material – that could mean very delicate silk textiles, brocades and things like that. So you need to be ready to deal with it when it comes out.
'Preservation comes before everything, because a top priority in China is to look after the material heritage. I've watched their conservation and material science develop in the decades that I've been working there – it's cutting edge now.'
Coles says Terracotta Warriors will have an unusually long run in Perth, until Chinese New Year in February 2026.
'We've sold more advanced tickets probably by a factor of five or six than any other exhibition we've ever done. We know people are buying tickets from the east coast and from overseas to come here,' he says.
'We've had a lot of license to ask for material, to select material, and the authorities have been very accommodating. I think the enduring relationship between WA and China has played a part, particularly because of the resources industry. We know that China is by far our biggest trading partner, three times the US for instance.
'Soft diplomatic relations are really important in order to work together, and the number of items and long loan time are a reflection of the bond of trust we built up with our Chinese partners.'
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The Age
5 hours ago
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Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'
