MELBOURNE.- Melbourne Design Week, Australia’s leading annual international design event, returns for its sixth edition from 17-27 March 2022, with a dynamic program that will transform Melbourne and parts of regional Victoria over 11 days with a series of exhibitions, talks, films, tours and workshops, including the biennial Australian Furniture Design Award, the launch of the Melbourne Design Fair and a program of design showroom activations that respond to the theme ‘Design the world you want’.
Two pillars – civic good and making good – provide a focused exploration of the main theme, with the thematic ‘civic good’ encouraging participants to think beyond the individual to serve the common interest and ‘making good’ exploring the impact of design beyond its functional or aesthetic impact to look at the social and environmental impact on the planet.
Extensive programming responding to the theme and addressing such issues as sustainability, technology, the circular economy and First Nations knowledge and thinking, will be activated at a host of hubs including the National Gallery of Victoria, RMIT Design Hub, Collingwood Yards, Scienceworks, MPavilion and Melbourne Connect, supported by a robust satellite program, including presentations by Open House Melbourne (Centre for Architecture Victoria), Melbourne Design Week Film Festival, Victorian Pride Centre and Melbourne Art Book Fair.
New for 2022 is the Melbourne Design Fair (16 – 20 March 2022) a commercial showcase of limited edition, rare and one-of-a kind collectable design by Australia’s leading emerging and established contemporary designers and designer-makers. An initiative of the National Gallery of Victoria in collaboration with the Melbourne Art Foundation, the Fair breaks new ground in the presentation, promotion and sale of collectible contemporary design in Australia and will offer audiences a unique cultural experience with all the design works presented available for purchase.
Expanding the reach of the week, Castlemaine and Ballarat will for the first time join East Gippsland as regional destinations hosting a series of events including performance and poetry at Midtown Cellars & Bar, Ballarat as well as a regional Art Book Fair hosted by Castlemaine Art Museum featuring local makers and independent publishers; and in connecting with global audiences, an extensive digital offering, including talks, virtual galleries of key satellite exhibitions, interviews and more, will be accessible via a dedicated online portal at
designweek.melbourne.
BRAND AND SHOWROOM PRESENTATIONS
For the first time the retail sector will be significantly activated in a program of brand and showroom presentations that will further bring design week to a broader public. Cult Design, in partnership with Danish design brand HAY, will invite leading Australian creatives including Tom Fereday and Mud Australia to reinvent the iconic Result Chair, designed by Friso Kramer and Wim Rietveld in the 1950s, to be auctioned for charity and Living Edge will stage a panel discussion to explore the role of architecture and design in the circular economy. Further presentations across Melbourne are catalysed by Tait, District, VBO Australia, Great Dane Furniture, Spence & Lyda, Articolo, Origine and Halcyon Lake.
AWARDS
Celebrating the best of Australian design, a number of awards programs will coincide with the week. The biennial $20,000 Australian Furniture Design Award 2022 (AFDA) presented by The National Gallery of Victoria and Stylecraft in celebration of the most interesting furniture and lighting design of today will be awarded to one of the five following shortlisted designers: Elliot Bastianon, Danielle Brustman, Chris Connell, Ashley Eriksmoen and Trent Jansen. Ian Wong will curate a survey exhibition of award winning design from Victoria to be presented to coincide with 25 years of the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards, the annual prize in recognition of excellence in design, which will again be awarded in March. The Melbourne Design Week Award presented by Mercedes-Benz; the annual prize awarded for an outstanding contribution to Melbourne Design Week will again be selected, as will the City of Port Phillip Design and Development Awards, celebrating design excellence in the City of Port Philip.
Victorian Minister for Creative Industries Danny Pearson said: ‘Melbourne Design week showcases Victoria’s amazing design sector to the world. Design can help shape our cities, our regions, our lives – this program reveals how Australian design is helping to create a more sustainable planet. I commend the NGV for their commitment to nurturing Australian design talent and congratulate the participants in this year's program for sharing their bold ideas with the world.'
Tony Ellwood AM, Director of the NGV, said: 'Melbourne Design Week is a festival of ideas and asks us to consider the ways in which design impacts on our daily lives - both positively and negatively. In 2022, Melbourne Design Week builds on the provocation 'Design the World You Want', prompting designers, businesses and audiences to envision how design can help to craft a better future for us all. As we look to designers to solve our urban, environmental and health-related challenges, the work of design professionals has never been more important. This program will offer audiences the chance to engage with design on a deep and fundamental level, as well as to glimpse the possible futures that await us.'
2022 PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
Melbourne Art Book Fair: Melbourne Art Book Fair: An annual event offering a unique platform that brings together a diverse range of art publishers, artists, and designers worldwide. The Stallholder Fair will return to the NGV Great Hall with over 90 publishers, including the NGV Design Store, independent publishers, established publishing houses and art galleries presenting books, magazines, zines, art prints and more. A complementary Online Marketplace will feature over 100 local and international publishers offering unique content from all over the world. Building on the success of 2021, the Melbourne Art Book Fair will once again host a range of satellite events reaching communities throughout Melbourne and into regional Victoria. Highlights include poetry pop up performances across NGV International, the launch of Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection comprising more than 60 essays that examine the history of LGBTQ+ activism; the creation of queer spaces and communities; and queerness as an artistic strategy, and the presentation of ‘The Annotated Reader’ from Ryan Gander OBE and Jonathan P. Watts, an exhibition-as- publication featuring texts annotated by artists including Marina Abramovic, Sarah Lucas and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
RMIT Design Hub and RMIT Design Archives: This central location combines several leading exhibitions during Design Week. Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan’s curatorial practice Friends & Associates will return with a multi-disciplinary group show entitled Self Portrait. Responding to an increased sense of introspection in recent times, participating creatives were encouraged to produce a self-portrait reflective of their personal and professional selves. Articulated as an extension of one’s being, typologies to be explored include a digital project by New York based artist and designer Tom Hancocks, a fridge by Andrew Carvolth, a water feature by Jonathan Ben-Tovim, a “mirror” by Elliat Rich, and a lighting installation by Ross Gardam. Additional exhibitions will be presented by Adelaide craft and design incubator Jam Factory, The AA Prize for Unbuilt Work, and the Victorian Premiers Design Awards. At the RMIT Design Archives, the exhibition Post-Digital Objects explores the future of digital data, memory, health through the disciplines of jewellery, interactive design, electronics, ceramics and textiles to question how we might capture, project, and memorialise digital moments in precious objects.
MPavilion: MPavilion hosts a range of events that celebrate the civic nature of design by focusing on the spaces and activities that form communities. The program will include conversations from the politics of beauty and the salon to the design of the nightclub and age-friendly cities; to making a home, to indigenise the built environment; and to making skateboarding more inclusive with a panel led by Kirby Clark of Decks for Change, followed by a party with Hoddle Skateboards and Skydiver Records.
Exhibitions & Group Shows: Reflecting a national pulse on design, the 2022 satellite program will include over 100 exhibitions of emerging and established talent. Tolarno Galleries will present a new body of work by Sydney-based Adam Goodrum and Arthur Seigneur, while Adelaide duo Daniel Emma will make their debut at Sophie Gannon Gallery. Showcase by New Assemblage will present an exhibition of emerging talent with participation reserved exclusively for those who have never participated in design week before. Marsha Golemac's Material Culture will showcase the work of 16 designers in an exploration of how and why things are made, and the social, functional or symbolic needs they satisfy, and curator Calum Hurley will exhibit HARD, an exhibition of “inclusive and resourceful” South Australian queer designers, each invited to create new work that incorporates a repurposed found element.
