There is reason to believe that the local art world is slowly coming around to the idea of design as a legitimate form of cultural production. Indeed, the NGV’s recent launch of Melbourne Design Week (16 to 26 March) cements any suspicion that this cultural shift is real and happening.
This first iteration features the work of Australian practitioners Ash Allen, Adam Goodrum, Dale Hardiman, Trent Jansen, Guy Keulemans and Kyoko Hashimoto, Ben Landau and Lucile Sciallano, David Mutch and Elliat Rich.
Gallery director Sophie Gannon says she is “very conscious of bringing design into the context of a commercial gallery.” Accustomed to exhibiting art with a “capital A” (including the likes of Emily Ferreti and Huseyin Sami), Gannon will continue to work within the fine art installation aesthetic. “I don’t want the gallery to look like a furniture showroom for the duration of the exhibition,” she says. “I want to display the pieces in much the same way that I exhibit visual artists, rather than changing my methods because I am exhibiting design.”
Indeed, Gannon is adamant that the pieces selected for the exhibition go some way to bridging an ongoing design/art schism. Melbourne-based artist David Mutch, for instance, has produced a concrete light work that, Gannon says, is as much critical as it is functional.
Gannon is confident that there is a bright future for design in the local culture sector: “I look forward to putting together Designwork #20 and beyond in the years to come,” she declares.
Designwork #1
Sophie Gannon Gallery
14 March – 1 April
Past meets present in Leyla Steven’s latest exhibition, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and co-curated by Artspace. The Australian-Balinese artists adopts a collaborative approach to restitution, scrutinising the systems of conservation and documentation we have inherited.
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About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
A new event has arrived in Melbourne’s cultural calendar with the inauguration of the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: an exhibition that aims to showcase the breadth and diversity of contemporary sculpture in Victoria.
An exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane sheds a new light on Brisbane’s history, presenting a significant historical archive of photography alongside contemporary artists responding to the original source material.
Vipoo Srivilasa is a Melbourne-based, Thai-born Australian artist whose ceramic artworks emanate a sense of positivity, playfulness and joy. In an interview with fellow ceramicist Sassy Park, he discusses his early introduction to the medium, curating the Australian-Asian ceramic exhibition Generation Clay, and his upcoming project re/JOY.
