TikTok generation switched on by White Rabbit Gallery’s new show

A private art gallery has suddenly found itself hosting 1000 visitors a day, more than some of the biggest exhibitions in the world. Here’s why people are lining up to get in.

A privately owned Chippendale art gallery has the TikTok generation queuing around the block for an exhibition whose wow factor has clocked up visitor numbers that would turn some big public galleries green with envy.

White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection in Balfour St has been drawing 1000 visitors a day since it opened its Lumen exhibition on March 6.

The artworks lend themselves perfectly to TikTok and other social media forums, and that’s why the gallery is suddenly hosting a flood of 14 to 22 year olds, many of them gallery first-timers, curator David Williams said.

Kiko Chen and Yulica Chen take at the Lumen exhibition at White Rabbit Gallery. Picture: Toby Zerna

“This is beyond anything we’ve ever experienced,” Mr Williams said.

“It’s brought a completely new audience into the gallery and we’ve had queues every day.

“There’s lots of selfie moments. It’s gone crazy on Instagram as well.

“We don’t have a TikTok channel ourselves so it’s something we’ll have to look into.”

Lumen popular TikTok artworks include Yao Chung-Han’s eerily beautiful DzDz which operates “at the intersection of light, sound and bodily participation”.

Visitors can stand or run their hands through columns of light, and the luminous energy is converted into differently pitched static noises.

Students Kiko Chen and Yulica Chen, 21-year-old friends, loved that one.

The interactive light artworks are perfect for the social media generation. Picture: Toby Zerna

The interactive light-based art works is drawing huge crowds. Picture: Toby Zerna

Audiences exploded after a TikTok of the show went viral. Picture: Toby Zerna

Another smash hit is Solar by artist collective LuxuryLogico. Solar flares are mimicked by a wall of flashing LEDs inserted into donated desklamps and connected to a computer program.

All the works in Lumen use the intangible quality of light. Cong Lingqi’s Dust 2 turns miniature consumer goods into space junk illuminated by the “sun”. LuxuryLogico’s Miniature is a mesmerising rectangular shape made from coloured LEDs.

Williams said audiences bloomed when a TikTok user posted a video on the show’s opening weekend in March, saying White Rabbit was the “coolest place in Sydney”.

Bec Matthews checks out some of the installations. Picture: Toby Zerna

White Rabbit opened in 2009 and is owned and run by Sydney philanthropist Judith Neilson who believes big public galleries can be intimidating for young people.

“Social media has had a huge impact in showing that art is for everybody and is not the preserve of an elite few,” Ms Neilson said.

“Many of our visitors are afraid to approach cultural institutions for fear of being judged. They are correct with this assumption. Many institutions tell visitors what they should like and exhibitions exclude our multicultural society. They are usually Eurocentric.

“Opinions and reactions are ridiculed if not compatible with so called expert and historical thinking. At White Rabbit all opinions are respected and encouraged.

“Our creative and talented visitors have opened up White Rabbit’s world as much as we have theirs.”

Bec Matthews and friend Joe Finsterer create their own images in the gallery. Picture: Toby Zerna

COMPARE THE CROWDS

* How does 1000 visitors a day compare with the big public galleries?

A pre-Covid Gauguin exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada had 995 a day

A Leonard Cohen show at the Jewish Museum in New York had 979

A show about the photographer Brassai at San Francisco MOMA had 1087

Compass: MCA Collection at the MCA in Sydney had 1084