VCA Art Forum | Narelle Desmond

Art Forum is the Victorian College of the Arts series of weekly talks by leading artists and curators, providing insight into their work and its relationship with the world. During Melbourne Design Week 2025, Art Forum looks at an art practice through design with a lecture by Narelle Desmond.

Narelle Desmond’s work focuses on how we traverse time through the things we make and how time can help us cultivate a deeper understanding of the world. Technology and design have long been central to our evolution—shaping how we create, consume, and connect. Yet technology is no longer a tool of our control. We cannot close it down. It has become indivisible from the natural world. This outlook was brought into focus by a chance encounter with a tiny beetle in her studio—a creature whose evolutionary lineage spans nearly 300 million years. Considering the humble beetle, as an emblem of evolutionary resilience Narelle’s current art practice is narrated by a creature older than time on a human scale.