Franky Walker – hands holding. Image courtesy of Trove

Holder

Presented by TROVE

Dates

Thu 30 May 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Opening Event
Fri 31 May 12:00pm - 6:00pm
Sat 01 Jun 10:00am - 6:00pm
Sun 02 Jun 10:00am - 4:00pm

Tickets

Free, No Booking Required

Venue

Mural Hall
1 St Heliers St, Abbotsford VIC, Australia

Access

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

Holder  features the work of eight emerging craftspeople from multiple disciplines exploring our relationship to the items we choose to surround ourselves with and the value we place on them. Considering the notion of holding, of things, space and speculation; Holder is a multi-matter exploration of honest beauty through possibility. Matter vs void, function vs ornament; Holder responds to the ways in which ambiguity and the purposeful practice of craft re-evaluates the adornment of space.

Holder is the first project of TROVE.

Participants

Amy Vidler

Amy Vidler is an artist and designer whose handcrafted objects play between the practical and the decorative. Working with resin and fibreglass, she blends the concepts of furniture, ambient lighting and experimental practices to create functional art designed to delight the senses and elevate spaces. Experimenting with forms and materials of unlikely combinations, Amy’s work melds organic textures with meticulously refined finishes. Her method of crafting fibreglass pieces is a painstaking study in randomness and precision at once. These contradictory concepts in execution and result form the basis of Amy’s artistic expression; smooth yet textural, natural yet formal, simple yet intriguing.

Minhi Park

Minhi Park is a Korean living and making ceramics in Melbourne. Minhi’s work reflects her fascination with natural lines and imperfection, as well as her appreciation and respect in raw and traditional forms that are found in old Korean cultures such as heritage buildings, monuments, crafts or even daily necessities that were used in the old days. Having studied ceramics at Kunkuk university in Seoul, Minhi then travelled and worked in several professions for about twelve years. She restarted her ceramics career in her third year in Australia where she worked as an apprentice in a ceramic studio in North Carlton.

Bel Williams

Bel Williams is a furniture and object designer from Aotearoa New Zealand based in Melbourne (Naarm/Birrarung-ga). Her work grounds itself in the mindful interplay of design fundamentals. Each piece emerges as a harmonious synthesis of form and material, where the inherent qualities of each element are thoughtfully considered and playfully manipulated. In 2022, Bel established her eponymous studio practice, an ongoing conversation through the lens of balance, weight and softness.

Claire Markwick-Smith

Claire Markwick-Smith is an interior, spatial, and object designer based in South Australia. With a Bachelor of Interior Architecture, Claire started her career in hospitality-based interior design, working on projects both nationally and internationally. Claire’s practice extended into object design after a year-long residency in metal fabrication and furniture design with Fab (formerly George Street Studios). Influenced by her interior design background, Claire’s object design practice focuses on composition, construction processes and materiality.

Annie Paxton

Annie Paxton is a multidisciplinary designer based in Melbourne (Naarm/Birrarung-ga). She works as an architect alongside her creative practice which seeks to navigate the juncture between architecture and furniture/object, with a keen interest in how design drives and is driven by the poetics of everyday life. Since the conception of her creative practice in 2021, she has curated and exhibited in VESTIGE, an exhibition with Old Four Legs as part of Melbourne Design Week 2022, as well as exhibiting in various group shows as part of Craft Contemporary 2022, and Melbourne Design Week 2023. She has more recently exhibited work in ELEMENTAL, a group exhibition at Studio Gardner, a group show at At the Above Presents, and was featured in DISCOVERY at Melbourne Design Fair 2023.

Jess Humpston

Jess Humpston is a designer-maker based in Melbourne (Naarm/Birrarung-ga). A background in both fashion and interior design has given her a finely tuned understanding of the space a piece of furniture inhabits and a sensitivity to the intimate physical interaction between user and object. Working predominantly in timber, Jess’s work balances traditional woodworking with architectural character, contrasting clean lines with tactility of the hand-made. At both large and small scale, her pieces consider the details connecting user to furniture and aims to elevate everyday functional requirements with the unexpected.

Georgie Szymanski

Georgie Szymanski is a multi-disciplinary designer maker based in Melbourne (Naarm/Birrarung-ga). Georgie works primarily with wood to create functional pieces, blurring the lines between furniture, object and sculpture. Her practice investigates intimacy within personal and collective spaces through a variety of scale and material matter. Georgie is intent on practicing craft as a way of re-evaluating the beauty of commonplace objects and their role in our sense of place. Georgie completed a Bachelor of Interior Design (Honours) at RMIT in 2018, a Certificate II in Cabinet and Furniture Making at Box Hill Institute in 2020 and graduated from Sturt School for Wood with a Certificate IV in Fine Furniture Making in 2022.

Isabel Avendado Hazbun

Isabel Avendaño Hazbún is an interdisciplinary designer/maker trained as a textile designer and fine-furniture maker. Isabel’s creative process is a testament to her commitment to sustainability. Her works are a result of material research and exploration, where she seeks to uncover innovative ways to minimize environmental impact without compromising aesthetic appeal. Mainly using discarded and repurposed materials as a medium Isabel skilfully manipulates and transforms waste into sculptural works that blur the lines between art and functionality. Isabel believes that objects that balance sustainability and aesthetics are vital and invaluable, and she strives to create pieces that embody this principle.