art Archives - The Design Writer

Garden Wall installation + NGV Triennial

April 25, 2018January 1, 2023despc

Visiting the National Gallery of Victoria during Melbourne Design Week and the NGV Triennial of Art and Design last month, I was struck by the investment in design, architecture and art that is currently ongoing at the NGV, and the NGV Architecture Commission, now in its third year, is a case in point.

“Garden Wall” by Retallack Thompson and Other Architects, NGV Architecture Commission. Photo: John Gollings

Designed by Retallack Thompson and Other Architects, this year’s installation / architectural insertion is called “Garden Wall” and features a simple white fence that runs 250 metres and divides the garden into a series of “rooms” – each rectangular and permeable due to the perpendicular, semi-transparent character of its mesh walls. Read more →

Review: Under the Sea by Tracey Deep

July 31, 2017January 1, 2023despc

By Penny Craswell

The gently swaying forms of undersea plant life can contain fascinating folds, crinkles and patterns. Tracey Deep is an artist who sees the beauty in ocean plants, even after they have been washed up on a deserted beach. By making sculptures from these forgotten remnants, she introduces us to a world where even the most stinky seaweed can become a thing of beauty.

Sea Urchin, Tracey Deep, burnt willow. Photo: Nicholas Watts

Sydney artist Tracey Deep’s work was recently shown at Saint Cloche gallery in Sydney. In the exhibition text, Dr Prue Gibson draws parallels with the Cabinets of Curiosity or Wunderkammers of the 17th and 18th Century, calling Deep’s work: “her own cabinet of curious natural specimens”. Read more →

Review: Women and Modern Australian printmaking

January 19, 2017January 1, 2023despc

Guest contributor Belinda Hungerford visits the Art Gallery of NSW exhibition Modern Impressions: Australian Prints from the Collection.

Modernism arrived in Australia at about the same time as other parts of the world and reached all aspects of Australian culture, with its crowning glory arguably the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Modernism was especially embraced by women with its designs quickly adopted in the domestic sphere through soft furnishings, glassware, crockery, furniture, lighting and women’s clothing. Publications such as the Home magazine were also instrumental in promoting the modernist aesthetic. Modern art began to appear on the walls with women not just admirers but practitioners too.

Ethel L Spowers Special edition 1936 colour linocut on thin ivory laid tissue 28.2 x 22.4 cm image; 35.4 x 25.7 cm sheet (irreg.) Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1977

During the 1920s and 1930s women dominated the modern art movement with various speculations relating to social change as to why. In conjunction with the loss of many men during WWI, the profitability of art-making had declined between the wars resulting in a lessening number of male artists. This, in tandem with the growth of social freedom, a development particularly beneficial for women, meant that more and more women were able to pursue careers with many choosing an artistic life. Those with independent means also took the opportunity to travel and study abroad. Read more →

Review: Connect(us) light installation by Warren Langley

May 2, 2016January 1, 2023despc

By Penny Craswell

A ribbon of light twists and turns above a pedestrian street in Perth’s latest urban renewal project, Kings Square, this is Connect(us), the latest light installation by Sydney-based artist Warren Langley.

Connect(us) by Warren Langley, Perth, by night. Photo: Trent Baker

Warren has been working with the medium of light and glass for over 30 years, creating individual light installations for the Shanghai World Expo in 2011, as well as more permanent lighting displays and public artworks such as a tower made of glass and light at the Canberra Glassworks and Aspire, a forest of sculptural trees in light under the underpass in Sydney’s Pyrmont, as well as major project for Parliament House Canberra, the Maison de la Opera, Amiens, France and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Tacoma, USA. Read more →

Five of the best design installations at London Design Festival

November 10, 2015January 1, 2023despc

By Penny Craswell

As a fan of multi-disciplinary design as well as experimental projects, I was pleased to see so many design installations at this year’s London Design Festival. I have already covered three of the best installations in this blog: Heartbeat, an installation of 100,000 white balloons by French photographer Charles Pétillon, and two Faye Toogood installations (The Cloakroom and The Drawing Room) incorporating fashion, curatorship, making and sculpture. Here are five more and why they are interesting.

1) Curiosity Cloud by Viennese studio Mischer’Traxler at the V&A Museum

Curiosity Cloud by Mischler Traxler. Photo: Penny Craswell

Curiosity Cloud by Mischler Traxler. Photo: PC

You enter an ornate room of the V&A filled with 264 suspended blown-glass bulbs hanging from the ceiling. In each bulb, a small insect hand-made out of transparent foil flutters against the side of the glass when it senses your movement. Katharina Mischer (1982) and Thomas Traxler (1981) met while studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven and started their practice in Vienna in 2009. Curiosity Cloud is part of their ongoing collaboration with champagne brand Perrier-Jouët exploring “small discoveries.” Read more →

Review: Sydney Festival’s Inside There Falls

January 11, 2015despc

By Penny Craswell

Inside There Falls, on at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival this month, is the most inter-disciplinary art piece I have ever experienced, combining paper art, installation, sculpture, writing, spoken word, costume design, music and dance. The piece is an installation by UK-based artist Mira Calix, with dancers from the Sydney Dance Company and choreography by Rafaela Bonachela.

Dancers and installation as part of Inside There Falls. Photo: Penny Craswell

As an audience member, the experience begins by being led into a dark room and asked to wear white overalls or coat, and being given a scrunched up paper object to hold. The sound of a woman’s voice starts to emanate from the object, reading poetry on the body and identity, written by Sydney-based writer Brett Clegg and read by actress Hayley Atwell. Already the mood is set.

Bruno Munari’s children’s book Circus in the Mist

November 13, 2014January 9, 2015despc

A couple of years ago, I contributed a number of texts to the Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design which was my first book contribution and an amazing experience. The Phaidon editors selected every example they commissioned from me – from infographics, to fonts, to magazine covers – and as a result, I learnt so much about graphic design. Even though 26 of my entries were published, for some reason, a few stories I wrote on children’s books and toys were not published – they must have decided to leave these out. So, since it is just sitting there, here is one of the stories I wrote, on a beautiful book by Italian designer and artist Bruno Munari.

Circus in the Mist by Bruno Munari. Image via LOG.

Circus in the Mist – or Nella Nebbia di Milano – was created by Italian designer and artist Bruno Munari in 1968. With black illustrations printed on transparent paper, this is not just a children’s book, but an object of play. Read more →

Review: Carousel installation by Carsten Höller

November 3, 2014February 7, 2024despc

By Penny Craswell

At Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, a golden carousel has been installed in the forecourt, the latest version of a series of works by Belgian artist Carsten Höller that interrogate and confound human perception.

Carsten Höller German 1961–, worked in Sweden 2000– Golden mirror carousel 2014 powder-coated and painted steel, gold-plated stainless steel, tinite-plated stainless steel, brass, mirrors, light bulbs, electric motors, control unit, power unit, sandbags 480.0 x 745.0 cm diameter (variable) Collection of the artist, Stockholm and Gagosian Gallery, New York © Carsten Höller. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery Photo: Christian Markel — Carsten Höller, German 1961–, worked in Sweden 2000–, Golden mirror carousel 2014, powder-coated and painted steel, gold-plated stainless steel, tinite-plated stainless steel, brass, mirrors, light bulbs, electric motors, control unit, power unit, sandbags, 480.0 x 745.0 cm diameter (variable), Collection of the artist, Stockholm and Gagosian Gallery, New York, © Carsten Höller. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, Photo: Christian Markel

The work is clad in gold coloured mirror. Instead of horses, you sit on a gold seat suspended by gold chains. The usual dizzying ride of a merry-go-round is slowed here to a gradual revolution, with seats spaced so that, even while riding the machine, you feel solitary. The floor underfoot does not rotate, and the centrepiece rotates in the opposite direction, creating a gently confounding experience that is not only reflective in the sense of providing a series of mirrored images, but also reflective in that it inspires a state of reflection – a slowing down of the fast pace of life. Read more →

Performative urban intervention at Art and About Sydney

October 15, 2014January 9, 2015despc

Art and About finished in Sydney on the weekend for another year. Performative works were big this year, including a wonderful work called “Bodies in Urban Spaces”. The concept is by Viennese artist Willi Dorner who enlists the help of acrobats, climbers and dancers to use their bodies in unconventional ways to fill and layer cityscapes.

Bodies in Urban Spaces as part of Art and About Sydney. Concept: Willi Dorner. Images: courtesy of City of Sydney

Dressed in colourful street clothes and hoodies, the performers find ways to insert themselves into the landscape, wrapping, layering, balancing, planking in and on the city, often choosing unremarkable structures or corners, in the process transforming the way we see them. Read more →