After a new chair? How about a mutant hybrid of four wooden stools in Game of Thrones-ish congress? Or a pink pouffe complete with fluffy dinosaur? No? A white placcy garden chair enthroned in a huge black log more to your liking? A blood-red bench seat made from bouncy castle vinyl?
When it comes to design, great minds do not think alike.
Simone LeAmon, curator of contempory design at the NGV is reflected in a work by Dutch artist Sabine Marcelis at the Melbourne Design Fair.Credit:Chris Hopkins
Melbourne’s inaugural Design Fair opened in an Abbotsford warehouse on Wednesday, the first of its kind in the country, with a selection of collectible works from the avant-garde imaginations of leading local designers that sit somewhere between art and functionality. If indeed the pieces offer anywhere to sit at all, you may need to utilise them after reading the price tags.
You can pick up a one-of-a-kind experimental lamp by Melbourne design dynamo Dale Hardiman, assembled from industrial waste, for a mere $4900, or a seat cast from molten aluminium tailings for just $4800. There are some Flow Form Vessels in stainless steel for under $1000.
But if you’ve the pocket money why not splash out $33,700 for a fettucine-like sculptural chair draped in velvet and leather by Helen Kontouris, $103,000 for Brodie Neill’s stunning dining table in nested veneers harvested from a flooded Tasmanian forest, or $50,000 for Lou Weis’ modernist cabinet with a single magnetic knob that opens the drawers and spaces within.
Or there’s Roland Snooks’ Remnants of a Future Architecture, an imposing “artefact” with no obvious function unless it’s to take your eye out, which “explores the design implications of wire-arc manufacturing”. Price on application.
Melbourne architect Roland Snooks at the Design Fair.Credit:Chris Hopkins
Half the fun of the fair is in the backstory of each work. There’s not much to interrogate in an Ikea POANG armchair beyond “will it fit in my car” – but get chatting to James Lemon about his Pest chair, made from stoneware, glaze, toothpaste and the designer’s very own saliva, and he’ll explain how he was inspired by the building behaviours of termites and bees.
The fair is a co-production between the Melbourne Art Fair and the National Gallery of Victoria. Asked to pick one piece as a surprise Christmas present, the NGV’s curator of contemporary design Simone LeAmon chose a deceptively simple metal fruit bowl ($25,000).
By Melbourne’s Susan Cohn, it was the prototype for a design she made for Italy’s Alessi. It came from a moment she noticed the moire pattern made by the sun coming through the metal mesh of her meat safe: “I thought, ‘Oh that’s really interesting’ and I went down to my workshop and started to play with that”.
Cohn says, for her, functionality is as important as beauty. “Walking into someone’s home and seeing [my design] with fruit in it, it’s magic,” she says. “That’s what it’s about, the use of it. And making it so it can last a long time.”
Melbourne based artists and designers Laura Clauscen and Lou Weis.Credit:Chris Hopkins
London-based artist Brodie Neill with his $103,000 dining table.Credit:Chris Hopkins
It’s the first design fair for Laura McCusker, who makes elegant ‘barcode’ screens from Tasmanian oak.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity to come together… to meet and talk with the people who are purchasing the work and who want to understand where the idea comes from, how the piece works, what is the story behind it. Because when a piece has a story, when there’s an understanding of it, it establishes longevity and an attachment.”
Lou Weis of Broached Commissions, which has taken part in design fairs in Miami and Dubai, says they’re about “building relationships with ‘specifiers’” – the architects, interior designers and interior decorators with rich clients who want the very best for a new project.
LeAmon said the fair was brought together “in lightning speed” but they have big plans: the appetite for unique designer pieces is big and growing.
“Think about the Melbourne Art Fair, [which] started on the mezzanine of the Royal Exhibition Building. It’s massive now, the preeminent art fair in the region, and we believe we can build this with the same ambition.”
Melbourne Design Fair runs until March 20 at Duke St, Abbotsford.
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