Melbourne Design Week 2023: Editor’s Picks

This year’s Melbourne Design Week was an insightful look into the diversity and quality of work being produced by Australian designers, providing a snapshot of the industry’s progression and maturity. Here we round up some of our highlights from the 2023 edition

Melbourne Design Week, the city’s annual design event presented by Creative Victoria in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), has stepped it up a notch this year. Eleven days spent visiting events, exhibitions, talks, films, tours and more across the city (just a handful of the 300+ in the programme) left us exhausted but also incredibly inspired. Looking back, the week was a heartening and insightful look at the breadth and scale of talent in Australia. What follows is a roundup of just some of the standout presentations on the ever-growing programme.

Melbourne Design Fair

The Melbourne Design Fair, curated by the NGV’s architecture and design curatorial team and presented in collaboration with the Melbourne Art Foundation, brought together over 60 galleries and the work of more than 150 designers — considerably larger than last year’s iteration. The fair provides a commercial platform for Australian design practitioners, curators and gallerists, and for visitors, the opportunity to purchase one-of-a-kind or limited-edition design pieces, including furniture, lighting and jewellery.

Clockwise: C. Gallery with works by Claudia Lau, John Wardle, Jenny Nordberg, Ben Mazey and more; Sally Dan-Cuthbert showed works by Sabine Marcelis; lighting by Sozou; Oigåll Projects showed works by Brud Studia, Brahman Perera, Studio Henry Wilson, Laker, Volker Haug Studio and more. Images by Lillie Thompson

Futures Collective

The stately Villa Alba once again hosted Futures Collective, an ongoing initiative for creators, makers and the stories behind them, which this year featured work that illustrated the impact of designing with transparency, collaboration and process in mind. 

This year’s Futures Collective co-participants were Innate Collection by Fiona Spence-Lyda and Wanda Jelimini, MATTERS, YSG × Tappeti, OKO OLO, Eco Outdoor and Scott Livesey Galleries. MATTERS is an initiative by Sydney-based designer and curator Marlo Lyda that prompts creatives with the question ‘What MATTERS to you?’, and the responses will be exhibited over a three-year period. (NO THINGS) MATTERS, the first iteration, provided a rare and intimate look at process and materiality, with a refreshing absence of product. 

Clockwise: OKO OLO; Innate Collection; (NO THINGS) MATTERS. Images by Sean Fennessy

A&A

The ground-breaking collaboration between Sydney-based industrial designer Adam Goodrum and French straw marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur under the moniker A&A continues to thrill. The centuries-old technique combined with vibrant colouring and complex geometries results in something special every time these two creatives collaborate. This year Tolarno Galleries exhibited four new pieces by the duo, the Lotus table and three variations of the Pod box. 

Images courtesy of Tolarno Galleries

Coco Flip

For Melbourne Design Week this year, Coco Flip founders Kate Stokes and Haslett Grounds produced a series of limited-edition experimental lights that were exhibited alongside a short film produced to tell the story of their production. Titled Linear, the film and series pose two questions: What is the value of our local artisan industry? And what stands to be lost when these industries are no longer viable? Linear was produced by Coco Flip in Melbourne from reclaimed timber in collaboration with Melbourne’s last remaining pleating factory, Specialty Pleaters in Williamstown.

Images by Pier Carthew

Kurunpa Kunpu / Strong Spirit

First Nations artists and designers Tanya Singer and Errol Evans collaborated with designer and academic Trent Jansen to create the Kurunpa Kunpu / Strong Spirit collection. The Manta Pilti / Dry Sand series was created by Jansen and Singer, whose family originates from a remote area of South Australia. The name refers to the dry sand now characteristic of the area and aims to communicate the devastating effects of human-induced climate change in the region. The Kutitji chair, meanwhile, was co-designed with Evans, originally from Far North Queensland, and reflects his long-honed craft of spears and shields. Each of the pieces is handcrafted from carbon negative American hardwoods (supported by the American Hardwood Export Council) with the help of Chris Nicholson and Mast Furniture.

Images by Fiona Susanto

Friends & Associates

Friends & Associates never shies away from the experimental or conceptual. This year the collective hosted a one-hour exhibition open to anyone who wanted to exhibit — the only requirement being that you bring something to sit on and stay for the entire hour. Attended by designers, architects, media, curators and the general public, it was perhaps the most ephemeral and entertaining of all the exhibitions at Design Week.

Top, left to right: Charlie White, Jann Henderson, Tom Fereday, Claudia Lau and Pie Pie. Bottom, left to right: Bonhula Yunupingu and Damien Wright, Isabella Henty Hardiman, Bolaji, Mahshid Ferdowsian. Images by Catherine Feint

VERSA

Sydney-based designer Tom Fereday and Melbourne-based designer Charlie White collaborated on VERSA, a showcase of furniture and objects made from end of life materials. The pair self-imposed a constraint to make only one design gesture each per room in the 400-square-metre Meat Market building in Melbourne’s north. The contrast of the designers’ quite different approaches resulted in a dynamic installation.

MANO by Tom Fereday; Installation view of VERSA by Charlie White and Tom Fereday. Images by Pier Carthew

The Silo Project

Taking over six former grain silos in Melbourne’s inner city, The Silo Project, presented by Ancher Architecture Office, Corey Thomas and Josee Vesely Manning  showcased a range of work by emerging designers from across Australia. Each of the pieces was produced in response to the site and suggested themes of urban decay, gentrification, material obsolescence and industrialisation. 

Danielle Brustman’s Crosswords Light; Marlo Lyda’s Remnant Console; FOMU, Billie Civello, Bel WIlliams and Ashisha Cunningham’s work; Josee Vesely Manning’s Mood Rings and Cluster lights. Images by Pier Carthew

STOCK

This year, heritage Danish furniture brand Carl Hansen & Søn presented STOCK, a collection of storage chests by designers Laura Bilde and Thibaut Allgayer. Each of the pieces is crafted from reclaimed Oregon pine from the Rud Rasmussen Workshop in Copenhagen by Carl Hansen & Søn’s own apprentice workshop, THE LAB’, which was founded to train and nurture cabinet makers as a way to preserve Danish craft.

Images by Felix Bardot

Oigåll Projects

Fitzroy gallery Oigåll Projects Upstairs — now reopened following a long renovation — presented Design House, a group show of work by ten artist-designers from across Australia: Volker Haug Studio, denHolm, Brud Studia, BMDO, Studio Henry Wilson, Cordon Salon, Laker Studio, Michael Gittings Studio, Lex Williams and Olivia Bossy. ‘Design often gets the sh***y end of the stick, plopped into white-wall galleries to be examined at a 40 centimetre to one point five-metre clearance. This is stupid. These objects inform our lives, improve them, sometimes inconvenience them but always enrich them,’ reads the exhibition statement. 

Floor lamp by Volker Haug Studio, chair by Lex Williams; coffee table and stool by Brud Studia, table lamp by Studio Henry Wilson, Totem by denHolm; floor lamp by BMDO, pendant by Brahman Perera; floor lamp by Olivia Bossy, vessel by Lex Williams. Images by Annika Kafcaloudis

Text by Suzy Annetta