Heala 2018

Hannah Brontë creates installations that bring together diverse media, including sound, sculpture and moving image, to explore language used in popular culture regarding womxn, specifically Black/Blak womxn. Her work centres on resilience, matriarchal futures and challenging current social structures. Brontë works hard to intertwine the knowledge of her female ancestors in each work she creates. With unrelenting strength, Brontë imbues her work with lived experiences, often articulating moments of joy within the grief and loss. In this work Brontë uses the colour orange to refer to the first colour a baby sees inside the womb. Heala is cyclical and unending, dedicated to a lost friend; it is complex and powerful.

Women in mourning 2012 from the Ritual and Ceremony series 2012–13

This work represents the mourning practices of Aboriginal people along the Murray/Darling Rivers. It talks about loss of land, language and cultural practices. I worked with 38 Aboriginal men and women who represent the 38 tribes of Victoria. The women are dressed in long black dresses and have white marks across their eyes that represent our mourning practices today. Everyone involved had the opportunity to share their stories of loss, sorrow and mourning.

– Maree Clarke

Obalow (Mermaid) 2017

Ghost nets are fishing nets that have been illegally discarded by workers on fishing vessels out in the oceans. They are referred to as ghost nets because they are almost invisible in the water, causing issues for aquatic life by tangling up creatures and suffocating the marine fauna. Artists from Pormpuraaw began collecting these nets ten years ago to create lively, colourful woven sculptures.
Obalow, the mermaid is also known as kunnganga in Wik‑Mungkan language; they can be a male or female and are described as beautiful half fish/half human, and are known to wail or sing like a whale’s song.

Revolution stool L 2016 from the Remolten N1: Revolution series 2016

GREAT THINGS 2 PEOPLE (GT2P) uses research and experimentation to push boundaries and discover new possibilities in material and formal expression. Revolution stool L is a boulder‑like stool made from stoneware and coated in volcanic rock, which has been re‑melted in a kiln using a similar technique to glazing ceramics. Experimenting with pieces of cooled lava from Chile’s Villarrica volcanoes, GT2P collects a porous lightweight black rock known as basaltic andesite from the volcano to produce the lava coating they call Quitralco, which means ‘fire water’ in Mapudungun, the language of the Indigenous people of south‑central Chile and west‑central Argentina. The stool is an example of designers innovating with ancient material and craft processes in a contemporary context.

Bridge table, large, prototype 2010

Honed over billions of years of evolution, the efficiency of natural systems is awe inspiring. Unlike human manufacturing, nature uses only what is essential, rarely wastes material and has found ways to create the strongest, lightest and most efficient structures possible. Bridge table is a futuristic dining table whose form is based on the growth patterns of bones and trees. Informed by the forces of nature, this work reveals that we are on the cusp of a new era of hyper efficient production – where man, computer and machine work together. Drawing on the mathematics of plant and bone growth, the structure of the table adds material only where it is structurally necessary.
Fabrication is guided by software that models these growth patterns and translates it into instructions that guide robotic tools and 3D printers.

Joris Laarman once said: ‘Technology is making things possible that were unimaginable even five years ago’.

What implications might the exponential growth of technologies have for how humans live and work in the future?

Lights in the living room 2017, Smiley has no nose 2015 and Primer 2015

Rich in narrative and irony, Tala Madani’s work depicts darkly comic and often theatrical stories, featuring bald, middle-aged men as the main protagonists.

In each of these three paintings, any supposed authority of the men is undermined in a critique of power relations, including that of male privilege. Madani upsets art-historical conventions, openly embracing caricature, gags and disarming visual simplicity. Her approach demonstrates a contemporary sense of sequencing, movement and speed influenced by cartoons, cinema, videos and television.

Male privilege refers to the opportunities, authority and advantages that society often extends to men. In what ways do you think Madani’s representations of men highlight and challenge ideas of male privilege?

Look 12 2018 Market collection, autumn–winter 2018–19

Frustrated by the environmentally destructive and socially exploitative practices that underpin much of the global fashion industry, Richard Malone has established a career exploring how luxury fashion can be done differently. Look 12 encompasses Malone’s commitment to researching and working with sustainable fabrics and ethical skilled labour to produce his collections. The halter top and bag are made from ocean waste and plastic bottles, which have been handwoven by expert weavers from the Oshadi weaving workshop, a collective of women weavers in Tamil Nadu, in the south of India. Malone has collaborated with the workshop since 2014 to develop approaches that integrate traditional and contemporary craft to offer experimental and sustainable new pathways for the luxury fashion industry.

Flax chair 2015 designed, 2017 manufactured

Christien Meindertsma’s practice draws attention to the way industrialisation and mass‑manufacturing can obscure a product’s supply chain. Meindertsma reveals these stories through projects that speak to the origins of materials and the traditional craft practices from which mechanised production processes emerged. Flax chair was an outcome of Meindertsma’s intensive research into the cultivation, farming and processing of flax in the Netherlands. Historically flax was cultivated to produce linen cloth – once a booming industry in the area. Today Dutch linen mills lie dormant and the flax is exported to mega‑scale textile factories in Asia. Global production has moved to wherever the labour is cheapest. The chair is made from a new bioplastic material comprising flax and polylactic acid, which was invented as part of this research project by Meindertsma in collaboration with Amsterdam‑based manufacturer Label/Breed and textiles company Enkev.

Have you heard of modern slavery in the textile industry? Check your label – do you know where your clothes were made?

DVD Zone 5 from the Arrows series 2020

DVD Zone 5 is a fictionalised map of Europe and Asia from an imagined future where the once stable European Union has disintegrated into medieval fiefdoms. Metahaven uses familiar geographic mapping devices combined with wry humour to chart the developments and intersections of power, technology and territorial identities, in relation to the political landscapes in Europe, Russia and Central Asia. On this map the relics of historical empires such as the ‘Polish Empire’ are reinstated alongside newly established ones such as ‘North Ikea’ and ‘Central Phobia’. Metahaven employs the methods and graphic language of design to study and communicate complex and dynamic concepts such as populism, nationalism and geopolitics.

Ore streams – Cabinet 2016–2017 and
Ore streams – Low chair 2016–2017

Studio Formafantasma produces design projects that aim to disrupt entrenched historical, political and social traditions. Underpinned by rigorous design research and material investigations, Ore streams is a collection of critical design objects that investigate the complexity and scale of the global market for e‑waste. Through in‑depth research, interviews and material experimentations, Formafantasma examined how e‑waste recycling, effectively ‘mining’ for the gold embedded in electronics, has become a huge and mostly unregulated black market. The vast majority of e‑waste is informally recycled in developing countries, where devices are burnt and broken, in often substandard conditions, to access precious metals. Formafantasma are drawing attention to this as a call for the protection of human health and the environment.

Have you heard of conflict metals? Did you know that there is gold inside your phone? Do you know what happens to your phone when you throw it away?

Original gravity stool 2011 designed, 2016 manufactured

Dutch designer Jólan van der Wiel invents tools and experimental processes that allow him to create new and unorthodox forms. Van der Wiel’s design work covers furniture, fashion, sculpture, installation and architecture. Original gravity stool is made with a mixture of coloured polyurethane and iron powder. This material is poured into van der Wiel’s custom gravity tool, a unique invention installed with two large magnets that influence the metal powder in the polyurethane through gravitational force. As the magnets are drawn apart, the stool rises from the mixture. The shape is determined by the natural force of magnetism, so no two stools are the same.

Puli murpu – Mountain range 2010

This is a significant work painted by Ruby Tjangawa Williamson and her daughter Nita, representing the Musgrave Ranges behind Amata, South Australia. The concentric circles in the centre of the work are kapi tjukula (rock holes) where water collects after rains and the patterned background draws on specific body designs for inma (ceremony). The artists have also depicted ultukunpa, or honey grevillea flower, a favourite sweet bush food of Anangu people. This important story is usually reserved for men, but as Ruby Tjangawa was born in this very sacred place, she was given cultural permission to share this story.

Men in mourning 2012, 2014 printed

This work represents the mourning practices of Aboriginal people along the Murray/Darling rivers. It talks about loss of land, language and cultural practices. I worked with Aboriginal people who represent the 38 tribes of Victoria. The men wear black T‑shirts with my interpretation of scars worn for different events, including the loss of a member of the tribe. The white marks across the eyes of the men represent traditional mourning practices. Through this work, they all had the opportunity to share their stories of loss, sorrow and mourning.

– Maree Clarke, 2013

Dress 2011

Since 2007 Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen has integrated traditional forms of craft with unconventional materials such as metal, interdisciplinary collaboration and technological innovation to create futuristic sculptural garments with a distinctive aesthetic, or visual style. This dress was designed for Icelandic singer Björk to wear during her 2012 Biophilia tour. It took several months to make and fuses machine and handwork to create the exaggerated forms. An early adopter of 3D‑printing techniques, van Herpen has been instrumental in redefining the conceptual and material language of contemporary fashion.

Watchword 2012

This work wants you to take action! Rivane Neuenschwander has long been interested in creating participatory works that invite consideration of contemporary moral and geopolitical issues. Here, you are invited to select from the different clothing labels that feature words adapted from handmade protest banners and slogans found on the internet, and pin them to the abstracted map of the world, or your own clothing. The artist intends that the choice of words, and how they are assembled together, manifests your personal values and hopes as the slogans are reformed and re‑enter the world.

What is the power of words? Consider the ways in which words are used to shape your view; for example, ‘asylum seeker’ versus ‘illegal immigrant’. What different connotations or feelings do each of these terms imply?