penique productions envelops melbourne’s royal exhibition building with inflatable MATRIA

penique productions brings inflatable MATRIA to australia

Penique Productions takes over Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building with the inflatable and translucent installation, MATRIA. The monochromatic pink artwork forms part of the 2025 arts festival Now or Never, which runs between August 21st and 31st. It reimagines the 19th-century building as a living, breathing organism, transforming it into a warm, womb-like environment filled with sounds. The site-specific intervention uses gossamer, floaty balloons that crawl and cling onto the contours of the space, cloaking around it like an ephemeral blanket.

For MATRIA, the Barcelona-based collective draws on the idea of refuge, memory, and care. In fact, the name itself stems from ‘mother’ and ‘motherland.’ These themes run through the artwork inside Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building, as the installation recalls the state and sensation of being inside a mother’s womb. The plastic material gently sways as the wind blows, and the visitors pad around through the intervention with the background music, humming and pulsating, following their every step. Penique Productions, which has once brought their inflatable installation inside the semi-open atrium of Llanterna de L’Auditori in Barcelona, co-created the pink and translucent MATRIA in partnership with Museums Victoria. It is set to remain on-site until August 31st, 2025.

all images courtesy of Penique Productions

Pink Installation in Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building

MATRIA uses one inflatable membrane that covers the interior of Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building. It measures approximately 150 meters long and 50 meters wide to match the architecture’s dimensions, and the public installation by the collective Penique Productions reaches 60 meters high at the dome peak. 

The inflatable system operates through continuous air pressure, all the while keeping the air circulation systems running throughout operating hours to keep the membrane inflated. The site-specific intervention also uses pink translucent plastic material, with sections connecting through heat-welded seams to create the complete structure. 

MATRIA uses one inflatable membrane that covers the interior of Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building

Performances inside Matria during now or never arts festival

The plastic material permits light transmission while providing color filtration. In this case, the pink shade distributes evenly throughout the material, retaining the membrane’s minimal weight to reduce structural load on the building. MATRIA also serves as a performance stage throughout the run of the Now or Never arts festival until August 31st, 2025. Inside the installation. rRoxymore from Berlin performs electronic music from her release Juggling Dualities, which includes synthesizer work and sound design elements.

Alex Zhang Hungtai plays the saxophone, synthesis, and percussion, with improvisation techniques that respond to the acoustic properties of the inflated space. Amber McCartney, a dancer and choreographer from Melbourne, is set to perform leech 2 inside MATRIA, which includes prosthetics, masks, and special effects. She’s presenting alongside Shapednoise, also known as Nino Pedone, a producer and sound designer from Sicily. Then, there’s Shapednoise, who creates electronic music and sound design during Amber McCartney’s performance. Penique Productions’s MATRIA inside Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building forms part of the 2025 arts festival, Now or Never.

the material measures approximately 150 meters long and 50 meters wide to match the space’s dimensions

the public installation by the collective Penique Productions reaches 60 meters high at the dome peak

the inflatable system operates through continuous air pressure

the site-specific intervention also uses pink translucent plastic material with multiple connected sections

the pink shade distributes evenly throughout the material

MATRIA also serves as a performance stage throughout the run of the Now or Never arts festival

project info:

name: MATRIA

collective: Penique Productions | @peniqueproductions

festival: Now or Never | @nowornever.melb

location: Royal Exhibition Building

address: 9 Nicholson St, Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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