The exhibition followed the Swayn Gallery of Australian Design’s appointment of RMIT Associate Professor Fleur Watson (School of Architecture and Urban Design) as the Creative Director of the 2025 Alastair Swayn Legacy Exhibition in June of 2024. The 2025 Alastair Swayn Legacy Exhibition was a landmark event that showcased the spirit of innovation and excellence defining Australian design to inspire, educate and connect, echoing Alastair's ethos of infusing the world with light, colour and humanity. 

The exhibition Deep Time Real Time explored, how we as global citizens, continue to struggle with reconciling geological timescales with our everyday lives that, in turn, affects our collective ability to make decisions on regenerative actions for the future. However, in utilising new technologies, we can gather, analyse and visualise data – some in real time – to better understand environmental conditions that would, otherwise, be invisible. 

Responding to the expansive spaces of Design Hub Gallery, the exhibition featured a large-scale installation – designed by architects Simulaa – containing geological and material samples with research works to visualise our relationship to time through material artefacts.

Presented alongside the interactive structure are a series of creative and research-driven works from renowned designers, academics and artists. Their contributions engaged with themes of ecology, energy and technology, offering critical perspectives on time-based thinking and the urgent need for new collective societal responses to environmental challenges.

Deep Time Real Time featured creative works and research from Fayen d’Evie, Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen, Alicia Frankovich, Emma Jackson, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Nicholas Mangan and Cameron Allan McKean, Joel Sherwood Spring and Simulaa.

This exhibition was produced by RMIT Design Hub Gallery with the support of the Swayn Gallery of Australian Design for the 2025 Alastair Swayn Legacy Exhibition. Supported by RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design and the Victorian Government, with core specimens supplied by the State Drill Core Library. 

Exhibition resources and details of the Public Program here

Exhibition guide here