If design is shaping our collective future, what version of the future is being modelled? And, more importantly, is it the future we desire? These questions are vital to this year’s Melbourne Design Week, which considers how design impacts our our future in terms of aesthetics, economics, technology, culture and environment.
Now in its third year, the week brings together designers, artists, academics, writers and more to consider the 2019 theme: design experiments.
Within this curatorial premise lie sub-themes, with central questions relating to waste and urban pollution, including oceanic pollution and recyclability. As Ewan McEoin, senior curator of contemporary design and architecture at NGV, says, “One highlight is a symposium called Toxic City which will bring together key thinkers around urban pollution and climate change, which includes leading climate change journalist from The New York Times, Somini Sengupta, and Daan Roosegaarde, the Dutch environmental artist.”
The week features further international speakers including Erieta Attali, an Israeli architectural photographer, and Dan Pearson, a leading UK plant designer. Yet there is a strong local focus, with consideration of how design impacts affordable housing, ageing in Australia, zero-waste buildings, gender diversity and Melburnians’ connection to the Yarra River. Meanwhile the exhibition program includes Welcome to Wasteland, where designers create new work addressing waste issues (think plates made of lettuce), and a show at Sophie Gannon Gallery which, curated by design academic Guy Keulemans, looks at supply chains and where materials originate.
Above all, the week aims to be generative: to create outcomes and speculations, rather than simply reflecting what has come before.
Melbourne Design Week 2019
Various locations
14 March—24 March
This article was originally published in the March/April print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Until 2026, Wanneroo Regional Art Gallery will be showing 53 original artworks by one of the most famous artists of the 20th century: Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol ICONS includes famous works such as Elvis (1963), Campbell’s Soup Cans (1968) and Marilyn (1967).
For the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Paris-based Fondation Cartier has commissioned 14 new works by Indigenous artists across the globe, curated by renowned Kuku Yalanji artist, Tony Albert.
From revamped industrial sites to brand new spaces in Sydney, to openings in Adelaide, Melbourne, Cottesloe and Darwin—across Australia there’s a flurry of new and reopening gallery activity.
In a rare interview, alongside her showing in the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Tracey Moffatt talks about her penchant for the staged and surreal, going beyond identity, growing up in Brisbane and moving to New York in her thirties, and the importance of imagination.
White Rabbit Gallery’s latest multimedia exhibition, A Blueprint for Ruins, explores the ongoing destruction and renewal of urban spaces in modern China, with works from over 20 contemporary Chinese artists.
Julia Gutman works with textiles donated by family and friends, creating layered figurative tableaux. We stepped inside her studio in Lewisham in Sydney’s inner west, learning how connection is central to her practice.
