British artist's immersive works on display as Parramatta Powerhouse opens

Es Devlin believes the way to change the world is to spend 15 minutes looking into a stranger's eyes.

In the world-renowned artist's first exhibition in Australia, her audience will be asked to do just that.

"I'll invite you to sit opposite a stranger, not talk, but leave a trace in a drawing of your encounter," Devlin says.

This is the "heart" of Devlin's exhibit The Turning, which opens at Powerhouse Parramatta this weekend.

"It's unusual to sustain a gaze with a stranger for 15 minutes, and it shifts you," she says.

"It's quite a humble act, in the context of some more technically complex pieces, but it's where the real work of the exhibition happens."

The Turning is made up of five large-scale immersive installations by the British set designer, who began her decades-long career in theatre before branching out to concerts, fashion shows, and art installations.

Devlin has been a creative force behind two Olympic ceremonies, a Super Bowl half-time show, and the world tours of artists including Adele, Beyonce, The Weeknd and U2.

"Everything that you see in this exhibition is only possible because I've stood in audiences for 30 years, and the audience has taught me," she says.

"What you'll be experiencing here is the audience as the protagonist. You are a performer in these works — the works aren't complete until you arrive."

After flying into Sydney this week, Devlin and her team have spent the last few days making tweaks to meticulously-planned projections, lights, and sound.

Three years ago Devlin saw the space and the suburb that her work would eventually inhabit.

"The river delta was my first introduction to this place," she says.

"We went round the park and started to really work with the First Nations team and the other curatorial teams here, to make something that was very specific for this place."

All of The Turning's installations were made in Australia, using local workers and materials.

Many of the concepts have already been exhibited in other galleries around the world, but here, they all have a local touch.

Labyrinth of mirrors

In Forest of Us, a multi-level labyrinth of mirrors thatmimics the structure of the human lungs normally sits still.

But in the Powerhouse, the reflective surfaces ripple slightly, just like the Parramatta River just outside.

"It's something about the aircon, which I hadn't planned," Devlin says.

"All around this building, there's movement."

The 3D models of historically significant place which make up Memory Palace have also been reworked for an Australian audience.

Alongside the tree under which the Buddha reached enlightenment and the steps of the Swedish parliament where Greta Thunberg began her first climate strike sits The Block in Redfern, where several Aboriginal-led organisations were founded in the 1970s.

Madjebebe, a sandstone rock shelter in Arnhem Land which holds the earliest evidence of humans in Australia, also features on Memory Palace's topographical landscape.

"It's a map of places where humans have significantly changed people's perspective about something throughout history," Devlin says.

"If people come away with a little bit more sense of their own capacity to shift not only their own perspective, but the perspective of another, then the work has done its job."

Choreography and drawing

Toward the end of the exhibit is Screen Share, which involves a piece of choreography projected onto hundreds of sketchbooks filled with Devlin's drawings.

At the projection's end, the audience is invited to tear off a page for themselves.

Some of the sketches are familiar — larger versions feature in Redraw the Edges of Yourself, which sits outside the museum.

The Australian iteration of that piece a large, egg-shaped sound stage, containing 244 hand-drawn studies of endangered local flora and fauna species — "Sydney citizens who aren't human".

"The invitation is to remember their names … make a habitat for species that aren't human within the human imagination," Devlin says.

Devlin hopes her work will encourage visitors to take a moment to engage with the world around them.

"There's a lot to take in in this building, and in order to remember it, you need to feel it," she says.

The Turning, along with the rest of Powerhouse Parramatta, opens to the public on Saturday.