Feature... Melbourne Design Week

JAMFACTORY@MDW: CRAFTS, CROSSOVERS AND COLLABORATIONS

Level 7, 124 Exhibition Street, Melbourne VIC
26 March – 4 April 2021

JamFactory@MDW: crafts, crossovers and collaborations is JamFactory’s first formal offering for Melbourne Design Week 2021.

Co-curated by Caitlin Eyre and Brian Parkes, the exhibition highlights the rich variety of creative intersections made possible through the unique networks, connections and co-located facilities of JamFactory in Adelaide. The thoughtfully designed and skilfully crafted objects in this exhibition celebrate materiality and process as well as the stories of human connection and collective enterprise behind their creation.

JamFactory is a unique not-for-profit organisation that champions the social, cultural and economic value of craft and design in daily life. Through its programs JamFactory aims to inspire audiences, build careers, and extend contemporary craft and design into new markets.

JamFactory works with industrial manufacturers, cultural institutions, Aboriginal Art Centres, material suppliers, architects, interior designers, chefs and wine makers. The diversity of these networks, and the material intelligence of the designers and makers associated with JamFactory, regularly result in innovative crossovers and collaborations.

The outstanding designers and makers featured in this exhibition are all strongly associated with JamFactory’s current programs and activities in ceramics, glass, furniture and jewellery. The selected pieces provide a rich sample of the beautiful and inventive work emerging from the distinct creative ecosystem that JamFactory has nurtured over almost 50 years.

EXHIBITORS

Kristel Britcher

Glass artist Kristel Britcher graduated from the University of South Australia’s School of Art with a Bachelor Visual Arts (first class honours) in 2007 and completed JamFactory’s Associate Program in the Glass Studio in 2011. Britcher was Program Manager of the Glass Studio from 2012-2019 and was appointed Head of the Glass Studio in 2019. She has travelled extensively throughout Europe and the United States to undertake mentorships and creative residencies and has exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Strongly material and process driven, Britcher’s glass practice explores her interest in historical glass aesthetics and processes while also engaging in a dialogue between past style and contemporary design. Through her extensive research into historical glass objects and museum collections, Britcher considers styles and techniques from various eras in glass production and melds them with her own design interests within her work. Training in traditional Czech glass cutting techniques was a pivotal moment in Britcher’s career as a glass artist and is a hugely influential cornerstone in her work, allowing her to find a more contemporary application for these processes. In her practice, the negotiation between hot and cold working is a particular focus for Britcher, with many works taken between the hot shop and the cold shop during the making process.

This body of work illustrates the eclectic intersecting influences on Britcher’s practice by loosely referencing and adapting stylistic elements, such the geometric line details of Art Deco, the geometric forms of Post Modernism, the strict geometric qualities of Russian and Czech glass cutting, and the broad open compositions of Western European cutting. While referencing style elements drawn from different geographical locations and historical periods, the purpose of Britcher’s artworks is not to recreate previous styles, but instead to develop new artworks that connect current process to the past and explore the various lineages of glass making. “These works touch on various styles and processes and bring them together to create a new design object,” Britcher says. “It’s not my motivation to master any of these techniques, but instead to draw on design elements to complement the forms and compositions that I’m creating,”

Sconce light, table lamp and solid cut glass objects, 2020-21
Blown and coldworked glass

Andrew Carvolth

Andrew Carvolth is the newly appointed Head of Furniture at JamFactory. He studied furniture design at the Australian National University School of Art and worked in furniture restoration and production roles in Canberra before moving to Adelaide in early 2017 to undertake the JamFactory Associate Program. He defines himself as both craftsman and designer and has established a successful design practice creating speculative exhibition work, commissions and edition objects. Carvolth’s practice is defined by a reappropriation of traditional making processes and associated materials, primarily timber, and attempts to capture a uniquely Australian vernacular.

In a world of specialists, Carvolth considers himself a generalist, exploring the many facets of craft and design practices including furniture making, tool/instrument making, lighting design, conservation and curatorial projects. In addition to his role at JamFactory, and his personal practice, he works with Canberra-based designer Elliot Bastianon through the platform One Two One Two to curate exhibitions of experimental design research projects.

In 2021, he and fellow JamFactory alumnus Dean Toepfer launched Mixed Goods - a dynamic 600sqm craft and design hub in Adelaide’s inner west offering independent studio spaces to artists, creatives, and design professionals.

The AP Chaise is the result of Carvolth’s ongoing explorations into mould making, sand casting, and weaving. These explorations over the past three years have centred around a relationship Carvolth has built with an industrial foundry in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. Through word of mouth at JamFactory he discovered the company Cast Reproductions and its highly skilled, open-minded owner Peter Virgin. Carvolth describes the relationship in the vein of master and apprentice, in which Virgin is more generous with his time and knowledge because Carvolth has invested in listening, learning and responding.

The frame of the chaise (as with previous works in the series) has been cast in a lost investment process, with the original form made from hand-carved waste polystyrene packaging. The components of the form were then moulded in sand before being cast in aluminium.

AP Chaise from the AP series
Aluminium, paper, steel

Selinda Davidson

Selinda Davidson was born in Alice Springs. As a teenager she moved to Irruntyju and then Pipalyatjara. After finishing school, she became a member of Ninuku Arts Centre painting regularly as well as serving as an arts worker. Davidson works alongside her grandparents, senior artists Jimmy Donegan and Molly Miller, at Ninuku Arts and has learnt from them how to paint tjukurpa and translate story into her design (walka). Her family's country is in Warburton, WA and she speaks both Pitjantjatjara and English. She is an emerging artist/designer becoming increasingly known for her work in glass, featuring linear patterns scraped into muted monochromatic colours.

Davidson’s works in this exhibition are the latest iteration from the Walka Waru Kalawtjanga project – an innovative collaboration between Ninuku Arts and JamFactory. The project was initiated in 2018 by a small group of artists and Board Members from Ninuku who became excited by glassblowing during a professional visit to JamFactory. Returning to the remote community of Kalka in the APY Lands, they consulted with (then) Art Centre Studio Coordinator Mandi King (who had been an Associate in the JamFactory Glass Studio in 2006-07 and is now the Art Centre Manager) about ways in which Ninuku could be involved in the creation of blown glass works. With her deep understanding of glass-blowing techniques and her growing appreciation of Western Desert painting traditions, King guided the process of bringing Ninuku artists together with glass-blowers from JamFactory.

Based largely on the Scandinavian glass enamelling technique of “grahl” an innovative and collaborative process was developed. Pre-blown glass “starter” bubbles are made at JamFactory in specified colours and sent to Ninuku for the artists to paint designs onto in glass enamel paints. The painted works are fired in kilns and then sent to Adelaide to be reheated, and formed by professional glass-blowers into vessels and sculptural objects of the artists’ design.

Davidson’s new body of work, developed specifically for Melbourne Design Week, represents further evolution of the process. Davidson undertook a short residency in Adelaide in early 2021 to oversee the blowing of these works. She received intensive mentoring from internationally acclaimed glass artist Clare Belfrage, which focused on experiments with form and surface treatment. The hand-worked, lustrous surfaces of these works seem to deeply integrate the mark-making into the medium.

Selection of blown glass vessels with hand painted designs, 2021
Blown glass

Liam Fleming and Dean Toepfer

Liam Fleming is a glass-blower, artist and designer who currently works part-time as the JamFactory Glass Studio Design Manager. After majoring in glass at the University of South Australia he completed the JamFactory Associate Program in 2013. He has continued to develop his skills through undertaking workshops and residencies around the world including Murano, Italy and the Pilchuck Glass School in the United States.

Dean Toepfer began his career in the fashion industry before returning to university to study product design at RMIT. He went on to complete the Associate Program in JamFactory’s Furniture Studio in 2018 and now runs a successful multi-faceted design studio in Adelaide with projects ranging from furniture and lighting to object and exhibition design. He also works part-time as a Product Designer for JamFactory.

For this exhibition Fleming and Toepfer have developed a statement chandelier configuration of the Solute pendant light, a product they designed together for the jam - JamFactory Australian Made collection in 2020. In creating the original light, which also comes in a free-standing and wall-sconce version, the designers collaborated to combine traditional craft skills with modern design technologies.

The centuries-old craft of glass-blowing has been augmented here through modern design technologies including computer modelling, mould making and the use of commercially available lighting componentry. Through working closely together the pair were able to marry two very different skill sets through a shared aesthetic sensibility to produce a distinctive product that neither designer could have developed alone.

Toepfer notes, “the challenges faced in this project were mostly associated with combining hand-blown glass – a material and process that has many variables – with machine engineered components and fixings with very rigid elements and tight tolerances. This required extensive prototyping and troubleshooting and has resulted in custom-made glass moulds, milled components and specialised jigs to ensure quality control and consistency in production.”

Solute chandelier, 2021
Glass, steel tube, aluminium and LED lighting

Gretal Ferguson

Gretal Ferguson is a contemporary silversmith and jeweller. She graduated from the Design Centre Enmore in Sydney with an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery and Object Design in 2013 before undertaking a Masters in Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Products at the Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom in 2017. Ferguson completed JamFactory’s Associate Program in the Metal Studio in 2019 and was a finalist in both the 2019 International Silver Triennial in Germany and the 2020 International KOGEI Award in Japan.

Trained in traditional silversmithing techniques, Ferguson uses Australia’s limited historical tradition of silversmithing to her advantage by experimenting with processes that would be considered taboo to most classically trained silversmiths. “Though my work is predominantly created using traditional silversmithing practices, my creations are anything but traditional,” Ferguson says. “I am constantly exploring new ways of working with different forms and materials to modernise and compliment my obsession with traditional silversmithing.” This crossover between traditional and unconventional methods of making have allowed Ferguson to forge her own path in silversmithing and to create robust yet delicate forms that range from simple, subtle, aesthetically motivated forms to conceptually-driven statements on contemporary society.

The Stitched series of powder coated copper objects, vessels and brooches explore the changing roles of women in craft and society, commenting on the perception of what women do versus what they are actually capable of doing. By combining the traditionally masculine craft of silversmithing with the traditionally feminine craft of hand stitching, this series endeavours to challenge entrenched gender roles while paying homage to the craftspeople of the past. “Though the metal components are vital to the form of the works, it is actually the silk that holds many of these objects together,” Ferguson says. “The silk is structural, not just decorative, and is a great analogy for women in contemporary society.”

Selection of objects, vessels and brooches from the Stitched series, 2019-2021
Powder coated copper, silver plated copper, silk

Jordan Gower (Aburi Ceramics)

Jordan Gower was an Associate in the JamFactory Ceramics Studio from 2016-17. While in the program he assisted on several restaurant tableware commissions including work for Fino Seppeltsfield and Jacob’s Creek Winery in the Barossa. In 2017 he was awarded JamFactory’s Drink Dine Design emerging designer award and has since made a successful livelihood from designing and producing handmade tableware for a variety of prominent South Australian restaurants including Penfolds Magill Estate Restaurant, Hardy’s Verandah Restaurant, The Pot by Emma McCaskill, Woodstock Winery and Nido Bar & Pasta.

Gower creates handmade tableware and objects that reference the rich history of wheel-thrown studio pottery. He produces his work under the studio moniker Aburi Ceramics – a reference to Japanese food and culture that has long inspired him and a clever nod to the parallels between the culinary process of flame-searing to create something new and exciting and the transformative alchemy of firing naturally occurring clay and glaze materials in a kiln.

Gower designs objects to enhance the dining experience. He says the work presented in this exhibition, “is a collection of tableware collated from samples, prototypes and objects in production from my work with various restaurant commissions. It’s a cross section of ideas and techniques used when I collaborate with chefs. It illustrates the wholistic design sensibility I have developed in creating the highly functional outcomes required for restaurant tableware.”

The installation of these determinedly functional ceramic objects has been tightly orchestrated by Gower to highlight tonal transition within the glazes along with variation in shape and texture. By having each object tightly packed together, he alludes to the disciplined, repetitive nature of production throwing, while the overall tableaux demonstrates the breadth of design decisions required when collaborating with chefs and cooks who arguably complete the work in the process of plating up for service.

Tableware 2017-2021
Brown, white and raku stoneware, multiple glazes, fired in gas and electric kilns

Jordan Leeflang and Xanthe Murphy

Jordan Leeflang is a furniture and object designer who graduated with a Bachelor of Interior Architecture from the University of South Australia in 2016. He undertook a Certificate IV in Furniture Making at TAFE SA in 2017 and was the winner of the Australian Design Centre’s Workshopped Award for Design in 2019. Leeflang completed Factory’s Associate Program in the Furniture Studio in 2020.

Xanthe Murphy is a ceramic and object designer who graduated from the University of New South Wales with a Bachelor of Design (Honours) in 2018. During her studies, Murphy undertook training in product design at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, before going on to complete the JamFactory’s Associate Program in the Ceramic Studio in 2020.

Undertaking JamFactory’s Associate Program at the same time in the Furniture and Ceramic Studios respectively, Leeflang and Murphy were first drawn to collaborate on a design project through a shared interest in material exploration. Their collaborative efforts in designing and making the Ripple Side Table earnt them the title of joint winners of the 2020 DENFAIR: Front Centre Award, which celebrates emerging Australian design talent. For this exhibition, Leeflang and Murphy have expanded the Ripple Collection to include a coffee table and bench seat in both black and white colour schemes. In combining their diverse multidisciplinary training and knowledge in ceramics, textiles, object design, furniture making and interior architecture, Leeflang and Murphy have created furniture that gracefully and thoughtfully treads the line between decorative and functional.

The design of the Ripple Collection draws inspiration from the natural phenomenon of sand ripples and the meditative act of tracing patterns in sand. The ceramic discs are wheel thrown, patterned and glazed, with the rippled texture of these surfaces encouraging tactile interaction, while the American White Oak bases and hand-turned legs frame and compliment the discs with their solidity and naturally occurring grain and texture. The pairing of stoneware and timber challenges the traditional position of ceramics in the domestic setting, with the materials customarily associated with tableware instead used in the construction of the table itself.

Side table, coffee table and bench seat from the Ripple Collection, 2020-2021
Stoneware, American White Oak

Luca Lettieri

Luca Lettieri is a multidisciplinary artist who undertook a cabinetry apprenticeship with Jardan in 2013 before going on to study traditional furniture making through a Certificate IV in Furniture Design and Technology at the Sturt Craft Centre in Mittagong in 2017. Lettieri completed JamFactory’s Associate Program in the Furniture Studio in 2019 and was the recipient of the Italian Australian Foundation Fellowship, which allowed him to travel to Europe to investigate rural folk art traditions.

In his multidisciplinary art and design practice, Lettieri investigates relationships, connections and dependency as depicted through a series of abstract sculptural assemblages. Spanning an eclectic array of mediums gleaned from his material explorations across JamFactory and often comprised of steel, stone and ceramics, Lettieri’s colourful works draw inspiration from southern Italian folk art traditions and the inherent tension between natural and manufactured materials. The sculptural forms in this exhibition, Settimo and Ottavo, are part of an ongoing larger series of works that combine locally quarried sandstone and steel to explore the idea of dependency, with two objects relying on each other to exist as a whole.

While Lettieri is an alumnus of JamFactory’s Furniture Studio, the diverse learning experiences and craft skills that he gained from all four studios during the Associate Program have led him towards a distinctly exhibition-focused practice primarily producing abstract sculpture. Driven by experimentation and using his training in fine furniture making as a springboard to explore new materials and forms, Lettieri utilised the JamFactory community as an informal learning resource built from personal relationships and a bartering system between artists that encourages swapping skills, goods and services. “JamFactory’s Associate Program has provided amazing mentors and friends across multiple studios, as well as access to a range of machinery and tools that have helped me to develop my own aesthetic sensibilities and new directions for my work,” Lettieri says.

Settimo and Ottavo sculptures, 2021
Basket Range sandstone/Carey Gully sandstone, powder coated steel

Ivana Taylor

Ivana Taylor is an object designer who graduated with a Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Art Education/Design from the University of New South Wales in 2018. Her career began as a freelance textile designer. Taylor completed JamFactory’s Associate Program in the Furniture Studio in 2020 and was recently appointed as the Furniture Studio’s Production Manager.

In her design practice, Taylor creates soft sculptures and tactile functional furniture and lighting objects that explore the mindful and rhythmic qualities of wrapping, weaving and knotting textile materials. The combination of textiles and timber has promoted Taylor to explore material collaboration and hybrid design in her work, particularly the interdependency of textiles and timber in furniture making. Often heavily textured, Taylor’s designs reflect her fascination for the way in which visually and physically textural objects in an interior space encourage awareness of the present moment by engaging multiple senses. The sustainable principle of design for disassembly is also important in Taylor’s practice, as using continuous knotting and wrapping to attach and remove upholstery results in furniture that can be used in both its naked form or rewrapped in different materials.

While at JamFactory, Taylor’s practice has transitioned from surface textile design to woven, three-dimensional objects and furniture that are informed by both the timber joinery skills and industry contacts she has acquired in the Furniture Studio. The lighting and objects in the Wrapped Gestures series reflect the refinement of Taylor’s sculptural and functional works through the process of collaborating with industry and the resulting strength of the internal framework. “Collaborating with local metal fabricator Martin Murray at George Street Studios has led to the fabrication of more robust, intelligently constructed frames,” Taylor says. “This has allowed my textile wrapping to expand into lighting and large-scale sculpture beyond the limits of my own design background and training.”

Ivana Taylor is represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.

Sculptural objects and functional lighting forms from the Wrapped Gestures series, 2021
Steel, cotton/linen, American White Oak