• Bio
    • Veiled Pleasures (2022)
    • Ideas of Home (2019)
    • Bruised Food: Art Action and Ecology in Asia - A Living Laboratory (2019)
    • Secret Interiors (2018)
    • Hyphenated (2018)
    • Where Here is Elsewhere (2016)
    • The Pleasures and Dilemmas of Inheritance (2016)
    • Shimmering Spaces II (2013)
    • Shimmering Spaces III (2013)
    • 2013 Castlemaine State Festival - Biennial Periscope (2013)
    • Here with You (2011)
    • Wall Works and Other Projects (2010)
    • Something in the Air (2010)
    • Secret Files from the Working Men's College (2010)
    • Plays and Wins: the time it takes (2009)
    • Possible Worlds (2007)
    • Little Thoughts Secret Pictures (2007)
    • Neutral Readings (2002)
    • Memory and Slowness (1998)
    • Masala Mix: Opening up the Anglo - Indian Tiffin (2019)
    • The Billboard Project (2018)
    • Holding Hands (2018)
    • The Ascension (2018)
    • A Golden Circle and Graphite Orb (2016 - 2018)
    • How much does your history weigh? ...(2016)
    • Letting things be what they are (2016)
    • Between Dreaming and Dying (2015)
    • Closeness and Distance (2015)
    • Bespoke (2013)
    • P.O.S.H. (2013)
    • Elsewhere (2013)
    • Reading from Both Side (2013)
    • A.E.I.O.U. (2013)
    • Rumour (2013)
    • Standard English (2013)
    • Somersault (2013)
    • Trade (2013)
    • Eat! My Son (2013)
    • Curtain (2012)
    • Brad (2010)
    • The Colonial Garden (2010)
    • Archipelago (2009-2010)
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    • 1987 - 1990
    • 1985 - 1986
    • Shimmering spaces
    • Plays and Wins
    • Possible Worlds
    • Shimmering Spaces: Art and Anglo Indian Experiences
  • contact
Menu

Rhett D'Costa

  • Bio
  • Exhibitions
    • Veiled Pleasures (2022)
    • Ideas of Home (2019)
    • Bruised Food: Art Action and Ecology in Asia - A Living Laboratory (2019)
    • Secret Interiors (2018)
    • Hyphenated (2018)
    • Where Here is Elsewhere (2016)
    • The Pleasures and Dilemmas of Inheritance (2016)
    • Shimmering Spaces II (2013)
    • Shimmering Spaces III (2013)
    • 2013 Castlemaine State Festival - Biennial Periscope (2013)
    • Here with You (2011)
    • Wall Works and Other Projects (2010)
    • Something in the Air (2010)
    • Secret Files from the Working Men's College (2010)
    • Plays and Wins: the time it takes (2009)
    • Possible Worlds (2007)
    • Little Thoughts Secret Pictures (2007)
    • Neutral Readings (2002)
    • Memory and Slowness (1998)
  • Projects
    • Masala Mix: Opening up the Anglo - Indian Tiffin (2019)
    • The Billboard Project (2018)
    • Holding Hands (2018)
    • The Ascension (2018)
    • A Golden Circle and Graphite Orb (2016 - 2018)
    • How much does your history weigh? ...(2016)
    • Letting things be what they are (2016)
    • Between Dreaming and Dying (2015)
    • Closeness and Distance (2015)
    • Bespoke (2013)
    • P.O.S.H. (2013)
    • Elsewhere (2013)
    • Reading from Both Side (2013)
    • A.E.I.O.U. (2013)
    • Rumour (2013)
    • Standard English (2013)
    • Somersault (2013)
    • Trade (2013)
    • Eat! My Son (2013)
    • Curtain (2012)
    • Brad (2010)
    • The Colonial Garden (2010)
    • Archipelago (2009-2010)
  • Paintings
    • 2025
    • 2021 - 2024 (shaped paintings)
    • 2020 - 2022
    • 2018 - 2019
    • 2010 - 2017
    • 2006 - 2009
    • 2000 - 2005
    • 1996 - 1999
    • 1991 - 1995
    • 1987 - 1990
    • 1985 - 1986
  • Catalogues/Essays
    • Shimmering spaces
    • Plays and Wins
    • Possible Worlds
  • PhD
    • Shimmering Spaces: Art and Anglo Indian Experiences
  • contact

Secret Interiors

14 -28 July 2018

Hidden Space

Unit 6, 16/F, Block A

Wah Tat Industrial Centre, 8-10 Was Sing Street

Kwai Hing, Hong Kong

Rhett D’Costa was born in India but emigrated to Australia as a child. His experiences as an Asian Australian have informed his practice, from the use of colour to complex expressions of identity and belonging.  Secret Interiors explores the experience of architectural space and colour, drawing on D’Costa’s experiences of Mughul painting and architecture*. This exhibition is in many respects a translation. It is less about the forms or direct colours in the architecture and paintings, and more about the gesture and atmosphere these spaces created, filtered through his personal encounters. It takes into account the richness of palace and court life, the social divisions within gender and across power structures, and the varied interests in and engagement with poetry, geometry, cosmology and culture. The idea for Secret Interiors grew out of an encounter with Indian miniature paintings nearly 30 years ago. It was the first time D’Costa had returned to India, 15 years after his family migrated to Australia, and the first time he saw Indian miniature paintings in person. He was particularly struck by the colour combinations in those paintings; so different from his experience of using colour during his recent art school years in Australia. He excitedly wrote lists of colour combinations in a travel diary. Fast forward to to 2018 and D’Costa finds this decades old diary with his notes about colour. It sent him back to re-looking at Mughul paintings and the numerous Mughul architecture forts and palaces in India which he has visited since that first return journey. Secret Interiors attempts to reactivate these experiences across time and space. A further layering takes place in accounting for the present experience of Hong Kong, where D’Costa has been a regular visitor since 2008, and the internal architecture of this site

* Mughal art and architecture is a characteristic Indo-Islamic-Persian style that flourished on the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal empire (1526–1857) 

Text courtesy of Kay Beadman from Hidden Space - Hong Kong. 

https://www.hiddenspace.land/copy-of-latency

View fullsize  Invitation for  Secret Interiors  (2019) designed by Katie Ho of Hidden Space
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong with technical and curatorial support from Kay Mei Ling Beadman and Isabella Isabella
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong with technical and curatorial support from Kay Mei Ling Beadman and Isabella Isabella
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong with technical and curatorial support from Katie Ho Kay Mei Ling Beadman and Isabella Isabella
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong with technical and curatorial support from Kay Mei Ling Beadman
View fullsize  Painting in  Secret Interiors  directly on the walls of Hidden Space in Hong Kong with technical and curatorial support from Kay Mei Ling Beadman
View fullsize  Installing  Secret Interiors  in Hidden Space in Hong Kong with technical and curatorial support from Kay Mei Ling Beadman, Katio Ho and Isabella Isabella
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail) with the photographic work  The Ascension  in  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Standing in front of one of the walls from  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong
View fullsize  Installation View (detail)  Secret Interiors  at Hidden Space in Hong Kong

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