—by Alice Blackwood
—main image: L-R Mood coffee table, mirror and side table by Dean Norton. Image: Luc Marlowe.
Explore some of the standout artifacts from this year’s Melbourne Design Week, each infused with compelling stories and exquisite workmanship.
Each Melbourne Design Week invites creatives to ‘open source’ their investigations into design for a better collective future. What makes the event so exciting is the freedom it offers to share experiments and explorations that are not necessarily neat, nor fully resolved. The program offers a rare view into the rapid evolution of the contemporary Australian design scene as it seeks to facilitate comfort, beauty, functionality and environmental custodianship.
COLLECTIBLE DÉCOR
Following the launch of last year’s biennial Melbourne Design Fair, a niche of Australian-designed objets d’art is rapidly emerging. What makes a design piece innately precious, rare, unique and collectible? Showcased at Tolarno Galleries, Adam&Arthur’s The Kissing Cabinet goes some way to epitomising these qualities. As recipient of the 2024 Melbourne Design Week Award, this piece marries functional design with engineering and masterful straw marquetry craftsmanship in a compelling homage to the mechanical furniture of the 1800s. The term mechanical does not quite explain the smooth, sinuous undulation of form, pattern and colour that unfolds as industrial designer Adam Goodrum and straw marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur manoeuvre the cabinet for onlookers. It is truly spellbinding to watch and to wonder at the imagination, problem-solving and hours of fine detail work that must have gone into this piece (said to have been three years in the making).
Another pleasurable discovery was artist-designer Jordan Fleming’s Éclat bowl, its long spindly legs and roughened aluminium texture embellished with polished brass. Fleming’s experimental and sculptural work transcends the more utilitarian aspects of furniture, and she has certainly elevated this piece beyond the mundane through its anthropomorphic presence. While commenting on our inclination towards abundance and materialism, the piece stokes the viewer’s drive to invest and collect just as strongly.
From the studio of Ross Gardam came a seven-edition collection of his Mass Table which, as the name implies, explores the fundamental equilibrium of form and mass. Each table in the experimental collection carries a different stone offcut, the distinct natural tones and raw broken edges anchoring satiny aluminium that has been bead-blasted and then waxed by hand for a softened finish.
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED
Elsewhere, lighting designer Christopher Boots and furniture maker Dean Norton delivered masterclasses on what it means to shape beauty into a form with functional purpose, creating visceral objects that are intended to be both viewed and used. Debuted at this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, Boots’ CRUX collection of pendant and sconce lights conjures the natural geometries of the five-star Southern Cross constellation. The new work sees Boots expand his repertoire of precious materials to embrace textured blown glass— manifesting as smoky stars nestled within rocky, sand-cast brass cups. The delicate glass components appear as if molten, glowing warmly within their fittings. The designer says he sought to “[bring] pieces of the universe to the human domain… [by creating] shapes embodying that sense of mystery and timeless allure present in the stars above.”
Embracing chrome plating and space-shifting surfaces, Dean Norton presented his Chromatic Process coffee table and mirror within the evocatively historic spaces of Villa Alba in Kew. The shabby-chic aesthetic of the location threw the polished, liquid-like surfaces of Norton’s minimalist pieces into stark relief. He suggests the mirror finish “soaks up” its surrounding environment, adding a playful dynamic to form in which new perspectives come from a slight shift in position.
AT THE CUTTING EDGE
Daniel Barbera has a reputation for working with legacy materials: marble, stone, metal, glass, wood, leather. His 2024 BCE–2024 CE showcase at Fletcher Arts reimagined these materials and ancient technology as future relics. Evocative side tables hark back to the period when smelting was first discovered (most likely by ceramicists via early glazing processes), reminding us this was “the Silicon Valley of Mesopotamia.” In the experimental glass work, he delivers objects that could have been created 5000 years ago. These one-off pieces reflect an intuitive, stream-of-consciousness approach to smelting recycled glass partnered with select fragments of stone and metal, resulting in raw beauty that simultaneously evokes balance.
Sydney-based designer Tom Fereday used his show at Oigåll Projects to comment on the significance of exploration in design practice and the true value of longevity. His Aver series of audio sculptures and high-performance sound pieces—including a cast aluminium speaker created in collaboration with Tasmanian loudspeaker manufacturer Pitt & Giblin—exemplifies a refined approach to recycled material.
What unites these works is that they are to be felt and experienced, rather than simply viewed.
To peel back the layers of a finished product or piece and understand the meticulous experimentation with which they have been composed is to understand design just that little bit more; to appreciate the hidden layers of meaning that dwell beneath the embellished, polished or textured surfaces.