Australian Design Centre (Object Gallery) 2000 - 2015

Les Blakebrough made an extraordinary contribution to visual art, craft and design in Australia as a practitioner, teacher, mentor and advocate. His nationally touring exhibition, Les Blakebrough: Ceramics, Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft celebrated one of Australia’s most acclaimed and influential ceramic artists. The Living Treasures series has been one of the most impactful opportunities in bringing major exhibitions of craft to significant galleries and diverse audiences across Australia.

In 2004, ADC (then known as Object – Australian Centre for Craft and Design) collaborated with Arts Tasmania to present Design Island, a spotlight on the work of 20 leading Tasmanian designers.

Curated by ADC’s Brian Parkes and Pippa Dickson, the Project Officer – Design for Arts Tasmania, the exhibition opened at the Sydney Opera House before travelling to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Design Centre Launceston. ‘Design Island’ went on to become the name for Arts Tasmania’s five-year strategy for growing and inspiring the state’s design sector.

From visionary educational programs (Design Emergency) to workshops and public talks, the Australian Design Centre energised its program of exhibitions with creatives guiding conversations, leading workshops or heading up educational programs. At the core of all activity was the maker and the designer.

Designers, Makers, Curators and Gallery Directors with global reputations, met with local designers to discuss the most interesting ideas emerging in studios and museums around the world.

Menagerie: Contemporary Indigenous Sculpture, in 2009 was the biggest and most significant exploration of Indigenous craft and design at that time in ADC’s history with an 11 venue national tour that included stops at Alice Springs, Cairns, Melbourne, Launceston, Adelaide and Canberra. Menagarie was also the first time ADC collaborated with the Australian Museum to produce a major exhibition together. Both ADC and the Australian Museum jointly exhibited the show before the Australian Museum purchased Menagerie for its permanent collection at the conclusion of the tour.

In 2005, when ADC was at St Margaret’s in Surry Hills, Atelier Bow Wow created Manga Pod, a versatile downstairs space that responded to the dynamics of the room. On loan to ADC for a number of years, the Manga Pod not only served its initial function, literally as a pod housing Manga, but also operated as a small exhibition and display space, and formed an architectural feature of other exhibitions.

Positioning the work of Australian designers and makers in the context of global trends has been an important part of ADC’s history. Concurrently in Tokyo, the ADC presented Encounters: Three Australian Designers (Marc Pascal, Ruth McMillan, Julie Paterson) as part of Tokyo Design Week.

International presentations were an ongoing strategy for the ADC. In 2005, the work of Australian designers was presented at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum; in 2008, following its national tour, Freestyle: new Australian design for living  was presented at Milan’s Triennale Museum. The Dinosaur Designs exhibition also continued to travel through parts of the Asia Pacific.

Published by the Australian Design Centre, Object magazine celebrated creativity and making, and was a journal of record featuring inspirational objects, works and projects by Australia’s most innovative craft and design practitioners.

Object magazine was published in print between 1996 and 2009, and digitally until 2011. Designer Stephen Goddard created some of the most beautiful design work for the magazine during his tenure with the magazine, while guest editors like Brian Parkes, Rhana Devenport, Merryn Gates and Robert Cook infused the magazine with exceptional insights and writing.

Design Now! presented a selection of works by outstanding university graduates across applied art and design courses nationwide.

Previously titled New Design and This Side Up, the rejuvenated (2008) annual exhibition featured graduates in categories Including: Design for the Body, Design for the Built Environment, Design for Communication, Design for the Home, Design for Industry and Design for Studio Practice.

This exhibition was annually selected from over 100 nominations from 21 universities across the country.

As a series, each of the exhibitions presented at the Sydney Opera House Exhibition Venue worked to push the boundaries of how designers could be considered in new, engaging and critical ways. For the exhibition Frost*bite, Steve Pozel invited Vince Frost to create an exhibition of graphic design that defied how this medium was explored in exhibitions internationally. Vince created a bold and innovative installation by plastering the walls in letters, propping significant works against the wall to create dimensionality, along with other elements including screens and tactile pieces. Also, to acknowledge Annabelle Moir, who did the shaping and making of this show from the ADC side - she did the brilliant curatorial “work” that was required to make this happen.

As part of the public programs for the exhibition Women With Clever Hands: Gapuwiyak Miyalkurruwurr Gong Djambatjmala, in 2012, several Indigenous women came to Sydney from Gapuwiyak sharing their skills and knowledge. Several Indigenous women from Dubbo also made the trip to Sydney—with the express purpose of connecting with these artists so that they could take the skills back to their own community, where the practice had died out.

Now And When: Australian Urbanism was a collection of dramatic urban visions exhibited at the 12th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. The exhibition at the ADC in Sydney featured two films accompanied by an evocative soundscape creating an immersive environment. The Now film highlighted some of Australia’s most interesting urban and non-urban regions, captured using ground-breaking 3D stereoscopic technology. In the second film, 17 futuristic environments imagine When we reach 2050 and beyond. Depicting Australian cities 40+ years into the future.

CUSP: Designing into the Next Decade was presented in collaboration with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in 2013 before a six-venue national tour that ran until April 2016. A major survey of the work of 12 designers working across a range of disciplines, including data visualisation, fashion, architecture and social robotics, CUSP considered how the future of design might look and how it might continue to impact our lives in the coming decades. Curated by Danielle Robson with Kathryn Hunyor, Head of Creative Programs and working with a Curatorial Advisory Group including academics from RMIT Design Hub and the Schools of Design and Architecture at UTS.

The ground-breaking Art on a String exhibition, curated for ADC by Louise Hamby and Diana Young, was one of ADC’s most ambitious projects to date, featuring 98 works by 60 Indigenous artists, and it marked a shift for exhibitions of this type and scale, acknowledging individual artists and not just the region they hailed from. A major catalogue was produced to accompany the exhibition, which toured nationally through 2002 and 2003, including Brisbane, Perth, Alice Springs and Wagga Wagga.

Freestyle: New Australian Design for Living was a massive collaboration with the Melbourne Museum. Freestyle was the largest design exhibition of its type ever shown in Australia. Drawing on works from 40 different designers and practices, the exhibition, which was curated by Brian Parkes and Annabel Moir, focused on objects for the body or home and included work from fashion designers and Indigenous artists as well as jewellery and homewares.

The exhibition, which was shown around the country at major venues including the Art Gallery of South Australia, later toured to the Milan Triennale Museum in Italy.

Woven Forms: Contemporary basket making in Australia in 2005 saw further contribution from Louise Hamby, who joined Lindy Allen, Trish Barnard, Lola Greeno, Virginia Kaiser, Andrew Nicholls and Brian Parkes as co-curators of what was an unprecedented survey of Indigenous and non-Indigenous basket makers from every corner of the country. Featuring work by 58 artists, Woven Forms surveyed the complex field of weaving and basket making and offered opportunity for cultural preservation and artistic exchange, with numerous works purchased for private collections and public museums and galleries.

Women with Clever Hands: Gapuwiyak Miyalkurruwurr Gong Djambatjmala was an exhibition of the fibre work made by women from Gapuwiyak in Arnhem Land. Curated by Dr Louise Hamby, with assistance from Lucy Wanapuyngu, Women with Clever Hands was produced by the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and presented at the ADC’s St Margarets venue in 2012.

Women with Clever Hands provided a representative view of 130 fibre works being produced in the community from natural materials including baskets, bags, mats, sculptural figures and items worn on the body.

This exhibition presents the storied history of Julie Paterson’s ClothFabric, tracing the evolution of Paterson's practice across nine vignettes. Each vignette reveals the creative experimentation leading to an iconic design, with Paterson's own sketches, lino prints, paintings, and sample books on display.

Cloth: From Seeds to Bloom was an Australian Design Centre touring exhibition, developed and first presented by Sturt Gallery, Mittagong as ClothFabric: 20 Years in the Making.

Part of the Chapel Series at the ADC St Margarets venue, Installation artist Janet Laurence in collaboration with sound artists Ross Gibson created a

Lawrence explores notions of art, science, imagination, memory, and loss, with her practice examining our physical, cultural, and conflicting relationship to the natural world.

2004’s Sydney Style, was a survey of 12 Sydney designers and design companies was one of the exhibitions presented at the Sydney Opera House exhibition venue. In Sydney Style, each designer had a number of their different products presented, grouped together in designer-specific sections in interesting and engaging ways.

This smaller iteration was then exploded out to the major touring exhibition Freestyle.

In 2007, ADC explored the possibilities of a digital exhibition space with Portal, a virtual gallery within the Second Life platform, the first an arts organisation in Australia had explored this territory. While the visibility of Second Life has now faded, it had an enormous impact in its moment, which continues to resonate as the possibilities of virtual and augmented reality enter the mainstream and begin to connect to the physical environment.

A provocative and engaging exhibition of work by Australian artists using clay in unexpected and surprising ways, HYPERCLAY: Contemporary Ceramics highlighted the versatility of material and the re-imagined contemporary possibilities of the material.

HYPERCLAY profiled eight artists at various stages in their careers whose practice the ADC thought were taking ceramics into bold new territories. Whether printing with clay, transforming rejected ceramic objects or playing at the intersection of the digital and the handmade, the artists in HYPERCLAY were all considered to be forging new pathways in Australian ceramics.

In 2006, at its satellite venue at the Sydney Opera House, ADC presented Droog: A Human Touch, an internationally touring exhibition from the iconic conceptual Dutch design studio. At this time, Droog was collaborating broadly, across disciplines and without regard for distance or political boundaries. Designers from all corners of the world were designing for the ‘Droog’ line, and it was these works that were shown to Australian audiences as a major feature of Sydney Design that year.

Since the 1970s ADC has toured nationally and been at the forefront of presenting the work and innovative practices of artists in craft and design with an unprecedented national reach that reinforces its role as a significant national organisation, making more than 250 stops at 100+ different arts organisations across all states and territories. Collectively and to date, more than 2 million people have seen ADC curated and produced exhibitions.

There were a number of exhibitions toured overseas, including Freestyle: new Australian design for living in Milan and Dinosaur Designs presented at Tokyo Design.

In 2014, ADC presented the work of Lola Greeno as the eighth instalment in its Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft series. This presentation, Lola Greeno: Cultural Jewels, was conducted in partnership with the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in Tasmania and opened in Launceston in 2014, before touring extensively through until 2019. The exhibition focused on her shellwork, a tradition passed down from her mother. As the first Indigenous Living Treasure, the exhibition included an accompanying monograph, specifically developed digital content and a short film.

The first issue of Object magazine (#60) to be published digitally came after an eighteen month hiatus. During this time, multiple options were explored, before and iPad app was settled upon as the best way to move forward with publishing the magazine, leading up to the magazine’s 20th anniversary. This and further issues of the digital magazine went onto receive much acclaim, including being lauded as FWA Mobile of the Day for 12 February 2013, being an Official Honoree for the Webby Awards, a Create Design Award, an AIMIA nomination, a Pixel Award nomination and winner of the People’s Champ, and a MAPDA award.

Bruce Mau was a colleague and friend of Steve Pozel from his Power Plant days back in Canada. Bruce mentored ADC team members at various stages, sharing his wisdom and ideas. Here is just one of the key insights from Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth written in 1998:

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

In 2013, ADC’s focus was again on Japan, with an invitation to curate the Australian component of the 2nd International Triennale of Craft at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. The Triennale also included work from the USA and Taiwan, as well as the host country and ADC’s contribution; 36 artworks by 20 Indigenous craftspeople, was curated by ADC’s Director Steven Pozel together with Adjunct Curator Lisa Cahill.

Following the success of the exhibition featuring some of the earliest work produced by rapid prototyping in the exhibition Inside Out in 2010, 3D printing, rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing continued to be of interest to ADC. Further exploration included CTRL P: OBJECTS ON DEMAND in 2013 presented work at a pivotal moment in the development of the technology, even allowing visitors to try the technology and to watch objects created on one of the numerous printers. In 2016, ADC examined the latest developments in Shapeshifters: 3D Printing the Future. an exhibition featuring work by some of Australia’s leading sculptural, furniture, fashion, architectural and jewellery practitioners.

When the Australian Design Centre created its visionary 2015 Strategic Plan, it reimagined a possibility for design and the handmade to feature more impactfully into the future of Sydney. Working with hundreds of designers, makers, artists, benefactors, ADC members, the gallery team forged the insights and recommendations developed over two years - into a document that would be the centrepiece of planning and strategy for the next decade.

The plan outlined key strategies for audience engagement, educational programs, arts community development, financial support for makers and designers, new facility development and for creating a robust and engaging program for touring nationally and internationally.

As an outcome of the visionary 2015 plan for the Australian Design Centre, several developers worked with the ADC to explore the possibility of a permanent facility for the Centre. In 2015, a stupendous proposition was in motion for a harbourside venue with significant work prepared on strategy, building plans and financial models.

Without explanation, Barangaroo’s significant budget for the arts disappeared under the former NSW government’s care, leaving projects for major commissions, programs and new venues left unfilled as a promise to the citizens of NSW for the leasing of public land to major developers.

In 2001’s Rooms, staged at Customs House, Steve Pozel and Brian Parkes wanted to blur the edges of these new movements in exhibition design.

Rooms saw the creation of five distinct and separate spaces and was a response from different people—they became personalised and provocative spaces. The concepts ranged from a collection of Gene Sherman’s wearables (with Lindy Lee) to the collaboration between journalist Ewan McOin, Korban/Flaubert and Wishart Design, resulting in an entirely immersive environment - reminiscent of 2001 - A Space Odyssey!