Melbourne Design Week
Our Favorite Projects and Artworks From the Australian Design Event, 2022
Alternative Provisions | Presented by Craft Victoria
CURATED BY NINA ZULIAN
Melbourne Design Week 2022 returns to the Australian city with the critical theme 'Design the world you want'. This theme invites designers to investigate how we can create a better future. It encompasses two key pillars, 'civic good' and 'making good', which aim to explore how design can positively impact society and the planet.
The Australian design event covers a variety of disciplines, from communication design, industrial design, service design, gaming, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, urban design, fashion, craft and functional art. The extensive programme addresses sustainability, technology and the circular economy.
My pink friend - Affectionate Creatures, Narelle White | 2021 – 2022
Alternative Provisions
Presented by Craft Victoria
The Alternative Provisions exhibition presents Alexi Freeman, Ella Saddington, James Walsh, Jessie French, Narelle White and Yu-Fang Chi. It explores how unexpected and under-utilised materials, driven by the notion of ‘re-use’, are developed and uniquely transformed.
The exhibitors each forage for their material, whether organic matter or discarded waste product, to create works that offer production alternatives and a means to tell new stories. By joining these makers in their search for more mindful provisions, we are led to re-evaluate how we engage with materials for production and the potential presented by seeking conscious alternatives.
Affectionate Creatures, Narelle White | 2021 – 2022
Narelle White
Narelle White approaches ceramic work as a field of research and discovery. She developed an alternative clay made from organic matter, including food and grains. Each piece can undergo multiple firings in a creative cycle of collapse and repair. Each test and 'failure' is carefully preserved and folded back into new sculptures.
Jessie French, Other Matter
Driven by the need for greater closed-loop systems of use and conscious consumption, Jessie French's new work continues her material experimentation and development anchored in algae-based bioplastics with a further composite exploration using waste sawdust from a local furniture maker.
Bioplastic pieces, Jessie French | made from sawdust and microalgae | Photo – Henry Trumble.
Algae bioplastic bowl 2021, Jessie French | Photo - Pier Carthew
The Solace Containers by Claire Ellis | Photo Annika Kafcaloudis
Claire Ellis
Solance
The Solace Containers are wheel-thrown and single-fired recycled clay vessels, lined with recycled glass collected from a local restaurant and glazed using local eggshells as the source of calcium rather than the mined alternatives. Claire Ellis makes the lids out of 100% recycled clay bags that she collects from Melbourne ceramics studios. The labels on the bags are what colours the plastic which the ceramic artist knead, twist and stretch to create swirls and marbling before pressing it into sheets.
The Solace Containers by Claire Ellis
Design Tasmania
A non-profit design organisation, Design Tasmania is dedicated to supporting creative practice in Tasmania and collaborating to broaden the national and international audience for local design and craft.
Design Tasmania's showcase for The Melbourne Design Fair has been developed by freelance designer and curator Michelle Boyde. It presents a range of naturally resourceful Tasmanian designer-makers whose practice embodies a living relationship with their craft and the island's beautiful materials. The exhibition includes works by Brodie Neill and Lillian Wheatley.
ReCoil by Brodie Neill | Photo Angela Moore
Brodie Neill
ReCoil
Brodie Neill's ReCoil worships the ingenious recovery of Hydrowood from the forgotten depths of Tasmania's Pieman Lake. A section of virgin forest was flooded while creating a hydroelectric scheme in the 1980s. The Pieman River region's flooded forest is a precious treasure-trove for sustainably sourced Tasmanian timber. The Tasmanian born and London based designer used wood reclaimed by a company specialising in underwater logging to create the top of ReCoil, an oval dining table.
ReCoil by Brodie Neill | Photo Angela Moore
Lillian Wheatley, rikawa (kelp) | photo: Joe Chelk
Lillian Wheatley
Rikawa (kelp) + River Reed
Rikawa (kelp) was traditionally used to make water carriers, river reed, and basketry by Tasmania's ancient people.
Learning from her aunties the traditional ways of weaving, Rikawa and River Reed explore contemporary expressions of these versatile mediums, sourced sustainably from Lillian’s traditional homelands in North East Tasmania. They are expressive of Lillian’s long relationship with these cultural materials, gathered and made on country.
Continuing the intergenerational transference of knowledge between Lillian and her daughter Nindarra Wheatley, River Reed is a collaborative piece between ningi (mother) and niyanta (daughter).
Lillian Wheatley, river reed | photo by Joe Chelko.
Installation view of Gäna (Self) 2009-2018 | on display in Bark Ladies: ElevenArtists from Yirrkala | from 17 December2021 to 25 April 2022 at NGV International, Melbourne | Photo:Tom Ross
Bark Ladies: Presents Eleven Artists from Yirrkala
Presented by NGV - National Gallery of Victoria
The exhibition Bark Ladies: Presents Eleven Artists from Yirrkala is a collection of work by Yolŋu women artists from the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre (Buku) in North-East Arnhem Land. Buku is the Indigenous community-run art centre located in Yirrkala, an aboriginal community approximately 700 kilometres east of Darwin.
According to Buku, under Yolŋu Law, the 'Land' extends to include the sea, and the land and sea are connected in a single cycle of life for which the Yolŋu create their songs, sacred designs and art. Yolŋu women at Buku are known for channelling this unique worldview into daring and innovative works of art that demonstrate their mastery over the unique bark medium.
The exhibition highlights significant works by Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Ms N Yunupiŋu, Gulumbu Yunupiŋu, Barrupu Yunupiŋu, Dhambit Munuŋgurr, Mulkun Wirrpanda, Naminapu Maymuru-White, and more.
Installation view of Dhuwarrwarr Marika Birth of a nation 2020 | on display in Bark Ladies: Eleven Artists from Yirrkala | from 17 December 2021to 25 April 2022 at NGV International,Melbourne | Photo:Tom Ross