17 December: Melbourne Design Week, Australia’s leading annual international design event, returns for its sixth edition from 17-27 March 2022, with a dynamic program that will transform Melbourne and parts of regional Victoria over 11 days with a series of exhibitions, talks, films, tours and workshops, including the biennial Australian Furniture Design Award and a program of design showroom activations that respond to the theme ‘Design the world you want’.
Two pillars – civic good and making good – provide a focused exploration of the main theme, with the thematic ‘civic good’ encouraging participants to think beyond the individual to serve the common interest and ‘making good’ exploring the impact of design beyond its functional or aesthetic impact to look at the social and environmental impact on the planet.
Extensive programming responding to the theme and addressing such issues as sustainability, technology, the circular economy and First Nations knowledge and thinking, will be activated at a host of hubs including the National Gallery of Victoria, RMIT Design Hub, Collingwood Yards, Scienceworks, MPavilion and Melbourne Connect, supported by a robust satellite program, including presentations by Open House Melbourne (Centre for Architecture Victoria), Melbourne Design Week Film Festival and Melbourne Art Book Fair.
Expanding the reach of the week, Castlemaine and Ballarat will for the first time join East Gippsland as regional destinations hosting a series of events including performance and poetry at Midtown Cellars & Bar, Ballarat as well as a regional Art Book Fair hosted by Castlemaine Art Museum featuring local makers and independent publishers; and in connecting with global audiences, an extensive digital offering, including talks, virtual galleries of key satellite exhibitions, interviews and more, will be accessible via a dedicated online portal at designweek.melbourne.
BRAND AND SHOWROOM PRESENTATIONS
For the first time the retail sector will be significantly activated in a program of brand and showroom presentations that will further bring design week to a broader public. Cult Design, in partnership with Danish design brand HAY, will invite leading Australian creatives to reinvent the iconic Result Chair, designed by Friso Kramer and Wim Rietveld in the 1950s, to be auctioned for charity. Living Edge will stage a panel discussion to explore the role of architecture and design in the circular economy, Dedece, will present an outdoor cinema event to show the architectural films of Modernist designer Marcio Kogan and his studio MK27, and Mobilia, the West Australian retail hub will celebrate the launch of their first Melbourne showroom with The Wool Parade; a sustainable installation that will explore how past icons are brought into the future by acclaimed design studio Doshi Levien. Further presentations across Melbourne are catalysed by Tait, District, VBOAustralia, Great Dane Furniture, Spence & Lyda, Articolo, Origine and Halcyon Lake.
AWARDS
Celebrating the best of Australian design, a number of awards programs will coincide with the week. The biennial $20,000 Australian Furniture Design Award 2022 (AFDA) presented by The National Gallery of Victoria and Stylecraft in celebration of the most interesting furniture and lighting design of today will be awarded to one of the five following shortlisted designers: Elliot Bastianon, Danielle Brustman, Chris Connell, Ashley Eriksmoen and Trent Jansen. Ian Wong will curate a survey exhibition of award-winning design from Victoria to be presented to coincide with 25 years of the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards, the annual prize in recognition of excellence in design, which will again be awarded in March. The Melbourne Design Week Award presented by Mercedes-Benz; the annual prize awarded for an outstanding contribution to Melbourne Design Week will again be selected, as will the City of Port Phillip Design and Development Awards, celebrating design excellence in the City of Port Philip.
The Honourable Danny Pearson, Minister for Creative Industries, Victorian Government, said: ‘Melbourne Design Week showcases the Victorian design sector to the world, highlighting the rich and diverse talent that populates our local industries. Design can help shape our cities, our regions, our lives – and this program reveals how Australian design is helping to create a more sustainable world both at home and abroad. I commend the NGV for their commitment to nurturing Australian design talent and congratulate the many participants in this year’s program for sharing their bold ideas with all Victorians.’
Tony Ellwood AM, Director of the NGV, said: ‘Melbourne Design Week is a festival of ideas and asks us to consider the ways in which design impacts on our daily lives – both positively and negatively. In 2022, Melbourne Design Week builds on the provocation ‘Design the World You Want’, prompting designers, businesses and audiences to envision how design can help to craft a better future for us all. As we look to designers to solve our urban, environmental and health-related challenges, the work of design professionals has never been more important. This program will offer audiences the chance to engage with design on a deep and fundamental level, as well as to glimpse the possible futures that await us.’
2022 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
Melbourne Art Book Fair: Melbourne Art Book Fair: An annual event offering a unique platform that brings together a diverse range of art publishers, artists, and designers worldwide. The Stallholder Fair will return to the NGV Great Hall with over 90 publishers, including the NGV Design Store, independent publishers, established publishing houses and art galleries presenting books, magazines, zines, art prints and more. A complementary Online Marketplace will feature over 100 local and international publishers offering unique content from all over the world. Building on the success of 2021, the Melbourne Art Book Fair will once again host a range of satellite events reaching communities throughout Melbourne and into regional Victoria. Highlights include poetry pop up performances across NGV International, the launch of Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection comprising more than 60 essays that examine the history of LGBTQ+ activism; the creation of queer spaces and communities; and queerness as an artistic strategy, and the presentation of ‘The Annotated Reader’ from Ryan Gander OBE and Jonathan P. Watts, an exhibition-as-publication featuring texts annotated by artists including Marina Abramovic, Sarah Lucas and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
RMIT Design Hub and RMIT Design Archives: This central location combines several leading exhibitions during Design Week. Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan’s curatorial practice Friends & Associates will return with a multi-disciplinary group show entitled Self Portrait. Responding to an increased sense of introspection in recent times, participating creatives were encouraged to produce a self-portrait reflective of their personal and professional selves. Articulated as an extension of one’s being, typologies to be explored include a digital project by New York based artist and designer Tom Hancocks, a fridge by Andrew Carvolth, a water feature by Jonathan Ben-Tovim, a “mirror” by Elliat Rich, and a lighting installation by Ross Gardam. Additional exhibitions will be presented by Adelaide craft and design incubator Jam Factory, RMIT Architecture and UQ Architecture, and the Victorian Premiers Design Awards. At the RMIT Design Archives, the exhibition Post-Digital Objects explores the future of digital data, memory, health through the disciplines of jewellery, interactive design, electronics, ceramics and textiles to question how we might capture, project, and memorialise digital moments in precious objects.
MPavilion: MPavilion hosts a range of events that celebrate the civic nature of design by focusing on the spaces and activities that form communities. The program will include conversations from the politics of beauty and the salon to the design of the nightclub and age-friendly cities; to making a home, to indigenise the built environment; and to making skateboarding more inclusive with a panel led by Kirby Clark of Decks for Change, followed by a party with Hoddle Skateboards and Skydiver Records.
Exhibitions & Group Shows: Reflecting a national pulse on design, the 2022 satellite program will include over 100 exhibitions of emerging and established talent. Tolarno Galleries will present a new body of work by Sydney-based Adam Goodrum and Arthur Seigneur, while Adelaide duo Daniel Emma will make their debut at Sophie Gannon Gallery. New Assemblage by Ella Saddington will present an exhibition of emerging talent with participation reserved exclusively for those who have never participated in design week before. Marsha Golemac’s Evolving Practice will showcase the work of 20 designers in an exploration of material culture, and curator Calum Hurley will exhibit HARD, an exhibition of “inclusive and resourceful” South Australian queer designers, each invited to create new work that incorporates a repurposed found element.
Melbourne Connect: An initiative of the University of Melbourne driven to connect people, places, and possibilities, Melbourne Connect will host a series of events exploring the intersection of design and science. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research Group will open their doors for a series of tours showcasing how novel interactions are designed and developed in the lab through virtual and augmented reality, the internet of things, digital health, and artificial intelligence, while a multi-media exhibition presented by ClarkeHopkinsClarke Architects will examine the potential for built environments to act as a positive force that can repair natural and human systems.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led Conversations presented by Agency Projects: Providing an enriching experience for audiences to obtain a greater knowledge and awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander design principles and their direct relationship to sustainable and responsible living, Agency Projects will host a series of breakfast talks at Collingwood Yards that create a platform for dialogue with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners. Each talk will explore and reflect on traditional and ongoing design processes and practices that are both integral to community, sustainability and Country, and vital vehicles of intergenerational knowledge and cultural transfer.
Chairity by Cult Design: 20 Creatives. 20 Re-interpreted Chairs. 20 Charitable Donations. The Chairity Project 2022 will be the fourth edition of Cult’s esteemed charity event that invites leading Australian creatives to reinvent an iconic chair design. Each creative is given a brief through which to reimagine the chair, with the result exhibited and auctioned with all proceeds donated to a charity. In 2022, Cult will partner with renowned Danish design brand HAY to reinvent the iconic Result Chair, designed by Friso Kramer and Wim Rietveld while working at Ahrend in the 1950s.
Public Works by Monash Architecture: This symposium looks at the role of architects and designers in the public sector, and how this shepherds good design that works in the public interest. Convened by Mel Dodd, Andy Fergus and Timothy Moore, the two-day event at Collingwood Yards’ Music Market includes keynotes and panel discussions with Australia’s leading built environment professionals to investigate the upstream forces on architecture – where briefs are constructed, budgets are drawn, allies are made, and good design is advocated for, and enforced. This event includes a keynote by Philip Thalis and Laura Harding of Hill Thalis.
Open Nature by Open House Melbourne: Open House Melbourne will present a newly created program of walks, talks, tours and events that explore a growing movement towards ecologically responsive, ‘more than human’ design. Expanding on the past three years of the much-loved Waterfront series, Open Nature broadens the focus by offering – through a series of experiential and activity-based programs – ways in which we can shape a more positive future for our cities, suburbs, and regions through ecologically sensitive design practices and a deeper understanding our relationship to the natural world. In 2021, Waterfront extended beyond the city to the East Gippsland Lakes region with a program supported by the NGV, Creative Victoria, The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, East Gippsland Shire Council, and programming partnership with The School for UnTourists. In 2022, Open Nature expands on this regional commitment in partnership with the newly launched Latrobe Creative Arts Precinct, the NGV, and Finding Infinity’s The New Normal.
Craft presents Alternative Provisions: the work of designers and makers expanding material practice as an act of making good. The exhibition explores how unexpected and under-utilised materials, driven by the notion of ‘reuse’, are developed and used in interesting ways by today’s makers. Each exhibitor – Alexi Freeman, Ella Saddington, James Walsh, Jessie French, Narelle White and Yu-Fang Chi – forage for their material, whether organic matter or discarded waste product, to create works that offer production alternatives, as well as a means to tell new stories.
The Koorie Heritage Trust presents Blak Jewellery – Finding Past Linking Present, a contemporary jewellery design exhibition by Victorian First Nations Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants from the inaugural year of the KHT’s Blak Design Program – a ground-breaking professional development program supporting First Nations participation within the Victorian design sector. Exhibition programming includes talks and a panel discussion including Brian Martin, Jefa Greenaway and participants from the Blak Design Program.
Zero Footprint Repurposing by Revival Projects x Grimshaw: The world’s first ‘free repurposing hub’ in the heart of Collingwood. It is space where repurposing initiatives, such as the recycling of materials, will be facilitated on an unprecedented scale. The building itself (100-year-old, 1500m2 warehouse), will be demolished in 2024 to make way for new development, and will serve as an example of how repurposing existing materials can be a fundamental element of new development. The concept is to provide an immersive experience for a broad audience, to showcase what is involved in, and how we as an industry and individuals as consumers, can push the boundaries of, repurposing the materials we already have. Zero Footprint’s mission is to make it easier and more accessible for the design and construction industry to utilise existing materials.
NGV Architecture Commission POND[ER] by Taylor Knights and James Carey: A beautiful architectural installation, replete with a pink pond evocative of Australia’s inland salt lakes, has been selected as the winner of the NGV’s 2021 Architecture Commission in the Grollo Equiset Garden at NGV International. Designed by a Melbourne-based team comprising architecture firm Taylor Knights in collaboration with artist James Carey, the installation, entitled pond[er], offers a space for visitors to cool off during the summer months and reflect on their relationship with the environment.
Celebrating and interrogating design through its varied disciplines, Melbourne Design Week encompasses the full breadth of the design sector inviting all to come together to share ideas, show and sell new work and consider how design can be used as a force for good in an increasingly complex and precarious world.
An initiative of the Victorian Government delivered by the National Gallery of Victoria, in 2022 Melbourne Design Week will run from March 17 to 27. Learn more via designweek.melbourne, with the full program to be revealed in January 2022. Proudly supported by Major Partners Mercedes-Benz and Telstra, and Design Partner RMIT University.
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