Micro:Macro – models of insight and inspiration

Models shift perceptions and change understanding. Through altering scale, the miniature becomes visible, the massive, understandable. Single cells are expanded thousands of times, insects hundreds, and a whole suburb shrinks to a tabletop. 

Micro:Macro, in the Ian Potter Gallery of the Chau Chak Wing Museum, explores the role of models in understanding and exploring our world, and features models from science, mathematics, medicine, engineering, art, and architecture. 

At the University of Sydney, models have been a valued part of teaching and learning since the late-19th century. While digital options have now partly replaced physical ones, many disciplines including architecture, aeronautical engineering, veterinary science, and medicine continue to value the experiential and experimental benefits of physical models.

Early models of wax, papier-mâché, glass, iron, and brass are now appreciated as works of art in themselves, and as evidence of the limits of knowledge, interests, and focus of their times. To these have been added more recent materials such as Perspex, and new methods such as 3D-printing.

Regardless of when and how they were made, all these models share the desire to explore and understand our world and universe – to give visibility to otherwise formless concepts, expose the hidden, unlock the kinetic, or reveal patterns.