Alexander Brown, Aluminium details, 2023, image by Annika Kafcaloudis

Aluminium

Presented by Craft Victoria

Dates

Thu 23 May 11:00am - 5:00pm
Fri 24 May 11:00am - 5:00pm
Sat 25 May 11:00am - 4:00pm
Tue 28 May 11:00am - 5:00pm
Wed 29 May 11:00am - 5:00pm
Thu 30 May 11:00am - 5:00pm
Fri 31 May 11:00am - 5:00pm
Sat 01 Jun 11:00am - 4:00pm

Tickets

Free, No Booking Required

Venue

Craft Victoria (Main Gallery)
Craft Victoria, Craft, Watson Pl, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

Access

Accessible bathroom, All gender bathroom, Assistance animals welcome, Low sensory / relaxed, Wheelchair accessible

Aluminium is a single material exploration. Six designers, makers and artists respond to the allure, practicality, and ethics of aluminium and showcase the versatile applications of this metal within contemporary material practice.

With a shared sense of resourcefulness and ingenuity, exhibitors use exclusively recycled aluminium. They have each gathered their material from local sources, whether post-industrial waste sites, seconds from hyperintelligent machine manufacturing or discarded soda cans and studio offcuts. Through this exhibition, waste aluminium is repositioned as a prized local material, reclaimed and mindfully used to produce sculptural and practical objects of design. The exhibition joins the discussion on the complexities of working with raw materials in contemporary material practice. It brings particular attention to aluminium processing and encourages the broader design and creative industries to follow suit and be more mindful of material provenance.

Aluminium forms part of the launch of Conscious Craft – a Craft Victoria initiative showcasing innovative creations by makers and designers who are actively considering sustainability and ethics in their production methods and use of materials.

Participants

Abdé Nouamani

Abdé Nouamaniis a Moroccan-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based designer who works across furniture, lighting, and object design. Working primarily with wood, metal and clay, Abdé explores the inherent qualities of these materials to create functional forms that are at once curious and familiar. In 2020, he established Another Bureau of Design – a studio practice engaging in industrial and handmade production techniques to make design objects informed by the aesthetics of the built environment. Abdé holds an Associate Degree in Furniture Design and a Bachelor in Industrial Design from RMIT. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at Milan Design Week (2023) and New York Design Week (2022).

 

Alexander Brown

Alexander Brown is a Melbourne based multi-disciplinary artist and designer with a Bachelor (Honours) in Interior Design from RMIT. His diverse creative practice includes lighting and object design, sculpture and site-specific installations and has exhibited nationally since 2016. His work across design and artistic case studies question material identity and focus heavily on value, perception and labour. Through using commonplace materials and repetition of elementary actions en masse, he exposes and places a more complex value.

Andrew Carvolth

Andrew Carvolth is a designer and craftsperson who merges traditional materials and furniture making techniques with experimental making processes to explore Australian vernacular design. Andrew’s practice spans exhibition work, commissions and editioned pieces. He is the co-founder of Mixed Goods Studios, an independent craft and design studio in Adelaide, and the curatorial and exhibition platform One Two One Two. As the Head of the JamFactory Furniture Studio (2021-2023) Andrew worked on the design development and fabrication of several large-scale commissions and product releases along with implementing a new woodworking short course program. Exhibiting internationally since 2018, Andrew has presented works at Milan Design Week (2018), Abierto de Diseño México (2019), and Melbourne Design Week (2019-23).

Annie Paxton

Annie Paxton is a Naarm/Melbourne-based multidisciplinary designer. She works as an architect alongside her creative practice which seeks to navigate the juncture between architecture and furniture and object design. Annie has a keen interest in how design drives and is driven by the poetics of everyday life. Her work resides between the functional and the sculptural; the robust and the fragile; the material and the spatial. She has a tendency to imbue her works with patina and the trace of the hand, and the interrogation of time/process as a material is a salient driver in her practice.

Bel Williams

Bel Williams is a furniture and object designer from Aotearoa/New Zealand, based in Naarm/Melbourne. After a decade working in the design industry, Bel launched her independent studio practice in 2022. Here, she is driven by an ongoing exploration that moves freely between materials and grounds itself in the playful manipulation of balance, weight and form.

Welfe Bowyer

Welfe Bowyer is an artist based in Mahurangi East, Aotearoa/New Zealand. He began experimenting with jewellery and object design while working in the architecture field in Naarm/Melbourne in 2009, allowing him to conceptualise, experiment and create three-dimensional forms on a scale different from architecture. Although predominantly self-taught, Welfe developed his metalworking, gold and silversmithing skills through courses at Melbourne Polytechnic. His works emphasise form and structure, positive and negative space, unique material combinations, and handmade textures used to manipulate how we perceive an object. Welfe graduated from the Victoria School of Architecture in Te Whanganui-A-Tara/Wellington in 2005, receiving the Dulux Architecture & Design Award in 2004. In 2018, he was a finalist in the Mari Funaki Award with his series ‘2C’ / Twice Cast.


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