This is the third exhibition in the Artist Room, a new series highlighting an artist’s work in the MCA Collection.

Emily Floyd is a Melbourne-based artist who works across sculpture, print making and public installation, creating bold spaces for public engagement and interaction. With a keen interest in education, knowledge systems and the learning possibilities of creative open-ended play, her work incorporates a range of perspectives including social activism, 20th-century art and design, and alternative education models.

Working with language and text, Floyd creates works that engage our senses and initiate discussions about contemporary social, cultural and environmental issues. Its Time (Again), 2008, is a suite of 9 prints that draws on political poster design and influential political, feminist and sustainability texts from the 1970s. Garden Sculpture (2009) looks at the internet’s role as a shared space in facilitating self-initiated learning and the utopian vision of this model of education.

Presented for the first time since its original commission for the Jackson Bella Room, The Garden (here small gestures make complex structures), 2012, is a sensory environment designed initially to be touched and explored. Drawing on Floyd’s interest in education philosophies such as the work of Rudolph Steiner (1864–1924), and his distinctive approach to early childhood education that advocates for the importance of experiential learning and open-ended play, The Garden speaks to ideas of community and opens up the potential for gaining knowledge and in particular, experiencing language in alternate ways.