1st April, 2011 - 2nd December, 2012

The term Camping and Tramping is inspired by a 19th century document compiled by a British officer describing the field work and travails of his time with the colonial office in Malaya. Such documents along with colonial institutions sought to fill a void in terms of Orientalist knowledge available for a colonist or itinerant audience interested in the region. Looking at such texts which make up the colonial archive, the exhibition traces the rise of the Museum in British Malaya not just as an indicator of power over what was gazed upon as the exotic but acknowledges that the very advent of the Museum resulted in a staging ground for a project of accumulation and the ordering of knowledge.