Trent Jansen, Jugaad with pottery stool, 2016, terracotta.
Elliat Rich, Curio, 2015, timber, brass, clear acrylic, 430 x 1685 x 360 mm (from the Coolgardie Line).
Dale Hardiman, Best of the Best, 2016. Photography by Kristoffer Paulsen.
Dale Hardiman, Best of the Best, 2016. Photography by Kristoffer Paulsen.
Dale Hardiman, Best of the Best, 2016. Photography by Kristoffer Paulsen.
Ash Allen, Dollop, 2013, 320 x 380 x 420 mm. Photo: Jeremy Dillon.
Elliat Rich, Curio, 2015, timber, brass, clear acrylic, 430 x 1685 x 360 mm (from the Coolgardie Line).
Elliat Rich, The Urban Billy, 2013, Hand-formed borosilicate glass, mountain ash.
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
Congratulations to Julie Fragar, who has won the 2025 Archibald Prize for Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), her portrait of fellow artist and colleague Justene Williams.
From painting rituals to an obsession with flowers, we caught up with Laura Jones to discuss her process and practice, her current solo show at Jan Murphy Gallery, and what it was like to win the Archibald Prize for her painting of Tim Winton.
Pia Murphy leans into curiosity for her latest exhibition at Nicholas Thompson Gallery. Look What I Found is “referring to that experience in childhood of discovering surprising things in nature.” It’s a methodology Murphy uses in her practice, working with the sole intention of honest discovery.
There are many parallels between skin and painting. “Paint is a thin skin on a surface—a layer that transmits ideas into the world,” writes Jennifer Higgie in Thin Skin, the accompanying publication to a 2023 exhibition featuring paintings by thirty-six Australian and international artists.
Tina Havelock Stevens likes to feel the wind in her hair, which probably goes some way to explaining the generous punk spirit that infuses her multidisciplinary practice, the subject of the exhibition Now is a Beginning at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.
Amanda Bell’s poignant new commission for the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts transforms the heaviness of history and unsettles hierarchies of place.
