Present Matter(s) | Gallery Boot | Exhibition & Panel

Participants

Jessie French
Jessie French is an artist and experimental designer pioneering a post-petrochemical future through material innovation. Her practice explores the aesthetic and ecological potential of algae-based bioplastics, envisioning a world beyond conventional plastics. Through works that interact with light, transparency, and transformation, she invites audiences to engage with materiality in new ways while addressing the urgency of sustainable alternatives.In 2021, French founded Other Matter®, a design studio dedicated to developing and commercialising non-petrochemical materials for architectural and interior applications. As an extension of her artistic inquiry, Other Matter serves as a platform for rethinking material production and consumption within a circular economy. In 2024, the studio developed a groundbreaking, sustainable alternative to traditional PVC signage, marking a significant step toward scalable, real-world applications of her research.By merging art, science, and design, French’s work challenges conventional narratives around materials and sustainability, demonstrating the possibilities of regenerative design in a rapidly changing world.

Sean Brickhill
Sean Brickhill is a designer/maker from Naarm, Melbourne Drawing inspiration from architecture, Visual art and Sculpture. Sean aims to bring a fresh take on furniture design and functional art. He believes strongly in form over function but knows not to neglect the importance function carries in design. He aims to create engaging ways to convey traditional functionality in his work.

Ro Noonan
Ro Noonan is a Melbourne based artist that works between sculpture and painting. He has an innate preoccupation with materials, in particular the excess and the bi-products of construction: cut offs, supports and general debris. The selection process is an everyday experience, drawing attention to the details in textures, scuffs and general wear and tear. In bringing together these rejected elements, Noonan tests their ability to co-exist. The works are gradual in production, built slowly with a process that ricochets between struggle, failure and intimacy.

Indy Heath
Indy Heath, who works under the alias Spiraro, is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist working across textiles, sculpture, biomaterials, and lighting. Their work explores the material life of textiles, both living and lived, through a heightened sensory experience.They work with natural pigments derived from rust and plant matter, biomaterials such as seaweed and bacterial leather, and found objects such as metal and discarded textiles. By interweaving these elements into sculptural pieces, they question how future materials might coexist with those of the past. Blurring the line between organic and human-made, their work sits in the tension between what is grown and what is discarded. With a heightened sensorial experience of the world, Indy’s approach to making is rooted in sensory engagement, creating works that invite touch, sight, smell, and sound as ways to connect. Their practice extends beyond the studio into curation and facilitation, bringing others into dialogue with biomaterials and sustainable materials through group exhibitions and hands-on workshops.

Nicholas Aylward
Nicholas Aylward is a South East Queensland based designer and maker, With an interest in the manipulation of timber and metal, informed through his rural upbringing in Bangerang country where Nicholas developed his appreciation for the essentialism of the environment. Alongside his practice Nicholas continues to develop and seek inspiration through architecture as he works in the professional field.

Dusken
Dusken is a Melbourne-based furniture design and fabrication studio. With a background in architecture, they focus on cultivating rigorous design thinking, meaningful design outcomes, and realising those outcomes through contemporary technology and local materials.