Overview

 I remember:

As a child in Holland being taking to a pier on a beach in Den Haag. At the end of the pier was an exhibit of a submarine from which you could observe an artificial ocean world. It included a giant octopus who's mecanical tenticals would periodically hit the outside of the submarine.

The window in Captain Nemo's Nautilus functioning as a parody of the suburban loungeroom vista. The window perfectly coupled the threatening underwater world with the safety and security of the bourgeois home.

My grandfather's desk where there used to lie a large book of Goethe's Faust. The book was a hundred years old and had beautiful illustrations, including my favourite one, where Faust is contemplating Gretchen, like a tableau vivant, asleep behind a large circular window.

Peepshows, where the windows with peoples' faces become more interesting than the show in the centre between them.

Zoos, where one knocks on the glass to communicate with monkeys.

There seems to be a curious problem with windows in museums and galleries in Australia. Many spaces barricade views in fear of inviting an unfair competition between the display of the art inside and the world outside.

The white cubes of the last century have been replaced by the dark rooms of cinemas.

Artspace consists of rooms without windows.

dio rama uses the window to create a separate space for painting. The possibility of looking into painting. As opposed to the world coming into the lens of a camera, the window exhibits the view of the mechanics of painting as an enterprise unburdened by reality.