A&A is a collaboration between two talented men: Australian industrial designer Adam Goodrum and French marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur. The two met five years ago when Seigneur, who had moved to Sydney with his Australian partner, happened to knock on nearby neighbour Goodrum’s door one day—he’d heard Goodrum was a designer and wanted to connect. They got talking.
Now, they work together in an extraordinary way, with this exhibition based on how they employ the age-old child’s game of the ‘exquisite corpse’. In this case, the ‘blind’ collaboration, with highly unpredictable results, is based on two different aesthetic approaches, namely the design house of Goodrum combined with the traditional village-based straw marquetry skills of Seigneur. Their relatively new working relationship has led to this latest exhibition as part of Melbourne Design Week. “For both of us, we would never have done these things independently,” says Goodrum. “For me it is such a privilege to work with such an exceptional craftsman who wants to push the boundaries.”
The design and assembly of their work is, of course, highly collaborative. Goodrum tends to make a basic plan before a to-and-fro process ensues, with Seigneur doing the marquetry component (the straw, which he dyes, comes from France). Then, a lot of trial and error is involved: models are made, discussions held. “Because the pieces take so long, there is also time to say, ‘Hey, that bit isn’t working, let’s change it’,” Goodrum says.
Goodrum and Seigneur have made three large pieces to occupy the big main room at Tolarno and they say that because they are quite theatrical works, they have created a dark and moody setting with direct lighting to emphasise depth and reflection.
A&A: Exquisite Corpse / Cadavre Exquis
Tolarno Galleries
12 March – 28 March
This exhibition is part of Melbourne Design Week 2020, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria.
This article was originally publishing in the March/April 2020 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.
With the perceived necessity of ‘performing the self’ greater than ever, comes questions of what we share or obscure—as James Barth’s art attests at the just-opened ‘18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum’ at Art Gallery of South Australia.
An exhibition at UQ Art Museum centres the relationship between culture, tradition and the ocean, and illuminates how intergenerational storytelling, tied to oceanic themes, might subvert settler-colonial narratives.
In our special interview with the one-and-only Marina Abramović, ahead of her curatorial project at Adelaide Festival, she talks on almost 60 years of performance art, wanting a one-way ticket into space, and answers a question about her most famous performance that no-one has asked before.
