object eye
Object magazine 62 — Wood You Wear Review
Monday May 14 2012
Linda van Niekerk’s exhibition Wood You Wear? boldly and aptly questions assumptions about functionality and provenance and reflects her curious and audacious process in creating her new jewellery designs.
The small scale of the community in Tasmania and connectedness inherent in this proximity has led to a collegiality among designer makers and a collaborative spirit. In this exhibition van Niekerk capitalises on these exchanges through the design process she employs.
To create these new works there have been ‘partnerships’ with six different designers makers who each knowingly, either at the time of making or event after, have consented to van Niekerk using their completed components or discarded remnants as the major feature of her jewellery. Remarkably she resists temptation to re-design, adapt or re-mould, instead simply honouring the form and subverting the function.
Object magazine 62 — MAD Open Studios
Wednesday May 09 2012
In a successful attempt to enhance the experience of their visitors, New York City’s Museum of Arts and Design established the Open Studio Program in 2008. A three month in-house residency, the program allows six artists to work in a studio on the sixth floor, providing them with prime public exposure. In addition, museum visitors are given the opportunity to learn about craft and design practice. However, by blurring the line between a private studio and a place for unrestrained public discussion, one begins to question the benefits of this noon-traditional space.
As well as more conventional jewellery and ceramic practices, the current program houses Don Porcella, a pipe-cleaner sculptor whose thoughts on the Open Studio Program provoke the same fascination one gets from looking at his hand-made tools.
Object magazine 62 — Vert Design
Thursday May 03 2012
Andrew Simpson, director of Vert Design, sees his role as to create ‘beautiful forms that relate to people in whatever level they’re meant to.’ And for him, those forms can be anything from a chair to a conveyor belt piece — while the latter might generally be regarded as less aesthetic than the former, its beauty is in the realisation of its purpose.
Simpson refers to his practice, currently consisting of seven designers, as a ‘design house’ rather than a studio. He defines a design consultancy as a ‘gun-for-hire’ practice, and design studios as practices that produce their own concepts and take them to market. Vert sits somewhere in between — they work with a lot of clients on various industrial design products, but will also develop their own products and pieces, both functional and purely aesthetic.
Object magazine 62 — Lola Greeno
Wednesday May 02 2012
In late 2011, Object announced the next two recipients of the Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft honour, which has shifted to being a biennial event, with alternating years seeing an exhibition centred around a particular craft medium.
With Nick Mount taking the 2012 honour, 2014 will see Lola Greeno, an Aboriginal shell worker based in Launceston, open her Living Treasures exhibiton. With a career spanning over thirty years, Greeno is one of the most well-respected shell workers practicing in Australia.
Taking her cues from nature and history, and using the landscape as her studio as much as any dedicated space, Greeno herself was only inspired later in life, when she recognised how important the practice was to her culture and her heritage. Upon this realisation, she set about learning as much as she could from her mother, ensuring not only shell-work but family history remained intact.
Object magazine 62 — Healthabitat
Tuesday May 01 2012
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, defines a ‘social business’ as a ‘cause-driven business’ where the ‘investors/owners can gradually recoup the money invested, but cannot take any dividend beyond that point.’ Paul Pholeros AM believes that Healthabitat, an Australian private company of which he is a co-founder and director, perfectly fits that definition.
Healthabitat had its genesis in 1985 when the three directors (Pholeros, Dr Paul Torzillo AM and Stephan Rainow) were working together at the Aboriginal-run Nganampa Health Council. The director of the Council, Yami Lester, had seen health programs rolled out that saw more people attending hospitals and doctors for treatment, but recognised that that didn’t mean the situation was improving — there were no programs aimed at stopping them getting sick in the first place.
Visiting Object
St. Margarets, 417 Bourke St
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Tuesday-Friday: 11am-5pm
Saturday & Sunday: 10am-5pm
Free admission
+61 2 9361 4511
gallery@object.com.au
