Installation shot of New Design 2006
Object has been developing new design over the last five years to offer both opportunities and recognition to graduates who have chosen to work in object making and design fields. It has become a hotly contested honour to be chosen from up to one hundred and fifty nominated candidates, the nominations being made by lecturers and design professions from each state.
The selection of works in this year's exhibition is diverse and broad, ranging from practical objects from industrial design graduates through whimsical items with which to enliven our every day activities and seriously beautiful creations that test, to the limit, the oft debated line between design/craft and fine art practice.
There were a number of general themes that appeared to run through many of the pieces. My overriding impression of the work, collectively, was the sense of concepts that seemed to speak to ideas of identity. These encompassed interesting expressions of cultural identity, relationships between past and present and reinventions of everyday items. While on the surface, many of these works are a celebration of mixing materials, technology and ideas with consummate flare and ingenuity, I felt there to be a much more personal layer to many of theses pieces.
Tongan artist, Tevita Havea, fuses the work of two cultures and times with his combination of traditional fibre cordage and cold-worked blown glass objects that resemble giant seedpods. Though the artist comments on the tensions of opposing forces and the challenges of belonging to a traditional culture while living in a very different one, the work itself achieves a pleasing harmony and balance, the delicate textures produced by the cold-working process echoing the textures in the spun twine.
Katia Di Crescenzo's Let them eat cake is a complex combination of binary opposites-art and technology, contemporary and antiquarian, hand and machine made, delicate and confrontational. It is both feminine and intensely female, with an altogether cheeky use of the ultimate suburban-turned-chic craft of knitting to create an outrageously now piece, given the focus on knitwear in current fashion trends, which carries echoes of a more blatantly provocative style from centuries ago. The corset has reappeared many times in 20 th and 21 st century fashion. In this case, there is little left of its role as underwear.
Equally complex, but with a far subtler result is the Object winner of the Design for Manufacture category, Reductionism by Kasia Bilinksi. These garments have been conceived via a complex process of manipulation and layering of inherently simple items that can be changed in both function and form by a single twist. The use of neutral tones enhances the simplicity of form; as do the natural fibres, which drape sensuously around each other and the figure.
My personal favourite, for both concept and resulting product is the series of soft furnishings and accessories made by Alissa Jewel, An exploration of fabric and wallpaper patterns infected with a virus. It is both aesthetically pleasing and practical, without losing something of its originality. The motifs for these boldly patterned pieces are scientific slides of virus cells-although, without a science background, this is not the most obvious of inspirations. However, the result is quirky, fun, and contemporary with, I would imagine, broad appeal for the modern consumer. While the development of concepts for their own sake is a valuable part of the learning process, ultimately the ability to create objects that have a life beyond the journal is critically important for the maker in order to have a practice that goes beyond their training period.
In between the potentially mass-produced article and the art piece is the work of Madeline King, a series of limited edition slip cast vessels. The text accompanying these pieces alludes to the work of the artisan-a preoccupation that I have noticed creeping into a number of different areas of late, from bread making to design. Perhaps the values espoused by the guilds of a bygone era are making a comeback, which, ultimately, can only be a good thing for designer/makers. Daniel Mylonas' TV Bowl is another case in point. The rounded form is designed to nestle into the hand, while the three small feet enable it to be placed safely on a flat surface. But beyond this is the idea that there is something soft and intrinsically personal about an object like this that is used in the casual intimacy of one's living room. Mylonas has deliberately chosen to push this idea that emotional impact can be generated by objective qualities built into the design. This is not the main intention of design for mass production!
The winner of the award for Studio Based Practice was Janice Vitovsky for her glass forms, Idea of Wholeness and Moment when the darkness . The excellence and innovation in execution cannot be denied in these works, but where do they fit? These are not useful objects, as once was the criterion for a design/craft object. In conversation with another individual in the gallery, it was remarked that these were more like sculptures than anything else-sculptures that offer the viewer almost anything the eye might wish to make of them be they landscape, the ocean or light playing on a myriad of surfaces. I have no fixed opinion of where the line might fall between fine art and design-based practices. As long as people are making objects, there will be room to debate where to draw that line. The focus of the discourse will be more on the argument rather than the object itself. Whether consensus will ever be reached on this issue is questionable. Object as an organisation is committed to pushing the envelope on this issue, and to my way of thinking, whatever sparks and maintains public interest can only be a good thing for the practitioners in the long run.
In a more straightforward and practical vein, Campbell Boyer was highly commended for his new take on the articulating chair. His version, in Victorian ash and stainless steel, has been designed with a younger audience than that traditionally attracted to the reclining chair. This is a sleek and functional item with an ease of operation that is bound to appeal to the young decorator.
Another theme, almost to be expected, was that of environmental concerns. Top pick for an efficient design with far reaching application was Julie Frost's Mvura water purifier. In the wake of a deluge of media attention about chronic droughts in Africa, it is tremendous to see such a simple device that was specifically designed to be locally manufactured and used to help combat the results of low and contaminated water supplies in drought stricken districts. As a self contained unit for gathering, purifying and dispensing water, this is a superb piece of design that will go a long way to making a difference to people who are in such need of basic supplies.
On a smaller, though no less important, scale Sarah Gibson's Waterpod tackles the more domestic issue of carrying water on a daily basis. Made of a flexible material, the collapsible bottle is fun and funky and compacts down to a neat little pack when empty.
All the works in this collection demonstrate an awareness of the makers of the space around them as individuals, locally, personally, culturally and globally. Boundaries are being pushed in all directions, aesthetically, functionally and with form. There is wit, humour and not a little chutzpah in the approach at times by the maker in response to his or her brief, which makes for a lively range of outcomes at the end of the process. Given the diversity of work, the collection as a whole sits well in the pleasing space Object Gallery offers, which would have been no small challenge to meet. In the blurb contained in the publicity material for this exhibition, it is written that those selected for this show are the 'visionaries' who are the inspiration for future graduates and who will be 'keenly watched' by those in the industry. In my opinion, the breadth of work offered this year will allow a huge range of inspiration and watching to be done by those both studying and already in the industry.
