In The Institute of Isolation, a woman in a beige body suit with padding, cap and sneakers goes through a sequence of actions alone. She runs along a raised concrete platform, she breathes through a mask, she visits an anechoic (sound-absorbtion) chamber, she steps the internal circumference of a microgravity trainer while suspended from the ceiling. A voice-over describes her mission: she is preparing for space travel.
The Institute of Isolation by Lucy McRae. Image: supplied
This is the most recent work of Australian-born, LA-based artist Lucy McRae to be included in her first solo exhibition Lucy McRae: Body Architect, currently showing at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and curated by Simone LeAmon. As a filmic imagining of the preparation for a female body to travel to space, The Institute of Isolation encapsulates many of the themes in McRae’s work, including her fascination with testing the limits of the body (physical and psychological) and her preoccupation with the future.
There is no question that the world is in climate crisis, with school children on strike and increasing numbers of governments around the world declaring a climate emergency, so the theme of the XXII edition of the Triennale di Milano this year is particularly apt. Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival is an exhibition and series of international installations that explores what designers are doing to tackle the problem.
Totems, Neri Oxman and the Mediated Matter Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Triennale Milano. Photo: Gianluca Di Ioia
Broken Nature takes as its starting point the inevitable extinction of humans and explores the myriad ways that designers are attempting to tackle the problem. “Humanity is in peril… the strain we are placing on environmental bonds is significant, the needle measuring the tension is already in the critical zone, and the pressure is mounting,” writes Italian-born NY-based curator Paola Antonelli in the catalogue essay.
Guest contributor and European correspondent Lara Chapman visits ‘GEO-DESIGN – Alibaba. From here to your home’ at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven as part of a collaboration with the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) for Dutch Design Week.
Wednesday, 7:39pm: Click. A new tab is opened. Tap tap tap. A few keys are pressed. Enter. Scroll. Select. Click. Tap tap tap. A query is typed. Ping, a reply is received. Click. An Item is added to the basket. Click. Details are autofilled. Click. *Ping*. Confirmation email is received at 7:47pm.
Friday, 10:19am: *Ding Dong.* A Door is opened. A “pen” scratches on glass. A package swaps hands.
This scenario seems unremarkable, possibly even mundane. The cycle of search, browse, purchase, repeat, is constantly taking place online. However, for research designer Martina Muzi, e-commerce is an “incredibly urgent topic”. The ease of our interaction with e-commerce platforms belies a complex and sophisticated infrastructure that is entangled with areas such as political diplomacy, psychology, logistics, algorithms and new forms of labour. E-commerce is shaping our everyday behaviours in subtle but undeniable ways. Furthermore, its forces are invisibly shifting and re-defining contemporary geopolitics.
‘Live Streaming’ by Jing He. Photography by Tommy Köhlbrugge, courtesy of Design Academy Eindhoven
At the exhibition ‘GEO-DESIGN – Alibaba. From here to your home’, nine multidisciplinary design researchers examined China’s largest e-commerce website Alibaba.com from diverse angles. Held as part of an ongoing collaboration between the Van Abbe Museum and the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) as part of Dutch Design Week, the investigation-led project was conceived and curated by Martina Muzi and Joseph Grima. The selected designers, who are all alumni of DAE, had just two months from their briefing to the exhibition and undertook an intensive process of research, concept development and realisation. Read more →
Guest contributor and European correspondent Lara Chapman visits ‘Coded Nature’ by Studio Drift at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The audience is sporadically positioned around the gallery, hypnotised by the kinetic sculptures performing their entrancing, electrical dance. The 10 flower-like silk structures drop from the ceiling, opening their textile bodies , then retract suddenly upwards, closing. They pause. Sometimes they move separately, at other times together. They are irregular in their speed and pauses, seemingly autonomous. In an indefinite interval, in which all the structures are motionless, I lean towards my friend and whisper, “Wow! It is so satisfying to watch”. Looking around the room I know that this feeling is unanimous. Each person is silently engrossed. “You’ve said that in every room!” my friend replies.
Shylight Zaalopname, Studio Drift: Coded Nature, 2018, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Collection Studio Drift, Amsterdam. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Why is all the work of Studio Drift so satisfying? It could be the level of detail and delicateness in every piece. The small surprises. The fine craftsmanship. But overall, I think it is the sense of slowness and calm that strikingly contrasts our high speed world that makes the exhibition so enjoyable. Read more →
If the purpose of architectural installations is to explore ideas, experiment with new materials and test new forms, then the installation “Somewhere Other” currently on show in Venice has well and truly achieved its brief. John Wardle Architects was one of only two Australian architecture studios (along with Room 11) selected to show as part of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and worked with a range of collaborators on this work.
Somewhere Other by John Wardle Architects and collaborators. Image: Peter Bennetts
The exhibition theme this year, across both this exhibition and the whole biennale, is “Freespace”, through which curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Irish studio Grafton Architects raise questions about how people relate to buildings and vice versa, what is private and what is public space, and what is the architect’s role in this equation. Read more →
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 →
This year’s Melbourne Design Week centred on the topic “design values”, covering furniture, objects, installations, publishing and architecture. Apart from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), the other key venue for exhibitions and events was Watchmakers, a temporary exhibition space in Collingwood donated by the owner of Piccolina Gelateria, who will be building their kitchen and gelateria in the space following the event. Folk Architects was responsible for its transformation, stripping back the space to its original patina and applying subtle use of mirrored Laminex to provide an ideal site for the experimental exhibitions within. Here are some of the highlights of this year’s event.
1. 26 Original Fakes
This exhibition at the Watchmakers venue by young designer/curators Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan of Friends & Associates challenged 26 designers to modify a fake Jasper Morrison Hal chair as a statement on Australia’s replica industry. The resulting show explored a huge range of issues, from authenticity, to ethics, to material concerns, with a dose of humour thrown in. I was very pleased to write the accompanying exhibition text myself – see my separate post. More on 26 Original Fakes.
Tom Skeehan (left) and Dale Hardiman (right), curators of 26 Original Fakes at Watchmakers, part of Melbourne Design Week. Image: supplied
Exhibition view of 26 Original Fakes. Photo: Wayne Taylor
This exhibition text was originally written by Penny Craswell for 26 Original Fakes, an exhibition curated by Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan of Friends & Associates as part of Melbourne Design Week.
26 Original Fakes, Melbourne Design Week
Fake furniture takes the original design and perverts it. The image in the magazine might look the same, but the object is fundamentally different – not just in quality, longevity, function and aesthetics, but also in its very essence. What makes the original authentic is stripped away and all you are left with is an empty simulation. Read more →
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 →
‘Out of Hand’ is a new exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum that explores how digital technology is enabling new materials, processes and objects. It features more than 60 works by architects, designers, fashion designers and artists from around the world, with many focusing on new uses for cutting-edge digital design, scanning and printing technologies.
‘Who This Am’ by Kijin Park (left). Exhibition design by LAVA. Photo: Peter Bennetts
One of the most impressive aspects of ‘Out of Hand’ is the exhibition design by LAVA. The architecture studio won a competition to design the space, which consists of a series of curving pure white forms in vertical bands that flow through the space, creating walls, plinths and sculptural forms. Read more →
