In contrast to Europe where we’re looking at Design Week after Design Week slip away under our own eyes, a series of in-person events from talks, exhibitions, workshops and film screenings were at the core of this year’s Melbourne Design Week’s programming, that ended last week. We’ve rounded up our favourites.
A world we don’t want
Sometimes to find out what we want, we look to the opposite to understand what we don’t want. A World We Don’t Want presents thirteen ideas on a world we don’t want by leading Australian creatives, to speculate on a future we do want.
Re:Coquo
Melbourne based Design Gallery Modern Times has curated Re:Coquo, Latin for remodelling, readjust, alter, recast, and change. Expanding on the broader Design Week theme of ‘Design the world you want’, Re:Coquo participants were invited to examine existing work, material or unresolved ideas and revisit the broken, forgotten or discarded with the aim of creating something anew.
Close Phenomena
Exploring the principles of environmental psychology, visual artist and designer Katie McKinnon has created a multi-sensory response to the local natural world. Comprising large scale, dye sublimation prints on aluminium, and a collection of new paintings, Close Phenomena reflects on our changed and ‘distanced’ experience, to examine how our natural and built environments shape us as individuals, and how paying closer attention to the near-natural world can support our wellbeing and encourage emotional connection to place. Access the exhibition online.
Future Inheritance
Future Inheritance showcases the works of 20 artists, with new work commissioned for this exhibition. The exhibition explores the power of objects, the stories they hold and the ways in which they transfer ideas and values, from one generation to the next. If we were to leave an object behind for a loved one – what would it look like and what is the significance of that object; emotional, historical, cultural or otherwise?
