Annual Report Show
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Text from the introduction of show catalogue: Annual Report 07
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To design is to have the ability to make positive and negative changes.
The process of this project has been realising this through research, manufacturing, not manufacturing, commenting and coming to an understanding about my place in the world of design and art, and finding a commonality between these two places. The creative drive of design sometimes needs to be reigned in, and made to find a place of meditatation; to give time and thought to the fundamentals of creating. To unravel the loose threads, the things which are agitating and messy within design, and lay them clear in my mind was very important in the progress of this project. I wanted to look at why we design; where are the market forces for products and ideas coming from; who should be responsible for the ethics of the designs; who should be looking at integrating product life cycles and who are we really designing for. I wanted to find out how being involved in designing within a global environment, dealing with global warming and over consumption, would affect my practice.
The project I have produced has trawled sources and processes to respond to these questions. The final exhibition is more of a theoretical resolution in visual and audio form, than a design as I had originally intended. I began research on developing a range of furniture based on the inorganic collection and Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection combined with the contemporary style. My movement away from designing a manufactured object, a 'thing',was a natural progression as I developed more understanding of the underlying issues within design today. The established philosophies were not represented best by designing more useless stuff but in using found, reused materials to start up a more productive dialogue.
This dialogue between the materials and the viewer/user is more challenging and ultimately productive than actually producing more stuff. I set out to explore the ways that the philosophy of sustainability focuses on reducing the environmental impact of a product during its manufacture, use and disposal or reuse. It advocates strategies such as avoiding use of toxic substances during production, minimising materials used, minimising energy or water required during use and designing for repair, reuse or disassembly and recycling.
The issue has been addressed by Angelique Hutchinson, product design curator at Powerhouse Museum, who says design's ability to address sustainability is limited by its focus on the object or product. Designers need to consider the larger systems in which they and their objects are operating. They need to consider the needs that they are addressing through the design of a new object and question if those needs can be met in a more sustainable way. Does the consumer need a car or rather do they need transport?
In this project, challenging people's perceptions of what design can be is just as integral as any actual design objects produced. Tom Dixon is right in saying that furniture manufacturers do not know how to tackle the problems of sustainability. It is a difficult issue for them to address because they are about increasing consumption, not reducing it. Realising that creating new forms has little advantage (or few positive benefits compared with) over using existing materials, I stopped experimenting with making furniture models and began investigating materials and methods of design which may be simple yet appeal to an wider audience. I only had to restructure the found forms and create a method for generating many from one. Efficiency of stacking boxes began to have great potential, and the idea of creating furniture from the item usually discarded, at the end of a day of moving house or appliance shopping, was quirky too. Creating a modular system of boxes seemed like a comfortable solution, ticking the boxes of sustainable reusable and recyclable materials. They are found objects so there is no transportation cost or carbon footprint there. I also liked the idea that the boxes could become contemporary fashion and that the wealth communities would embrace them as much as the budget-conscious citizen. Displaying the boxes in all their modular glory seemed to define the aspect of the design which is so liberating - that the end user is the designer. Each user can define and decide what is most aesthetically and functionally pleasing, and what is appropriate in his or her own sphere. Experts educated in aesthetics acknowledge the positive relationship between aesthetic quality of an environment and people's feelings of well-being. The understanding of environmental psychology lends itself to a better attitude towards human environmental needs and preferences and an understanding of one's own environmental preferences. Leaving designs open-ended allows users to express individual control and enable fine tuning for well being and comfort; it gives people the satisfaction of being the definer of their own surroundings, through their own interpretation of beauty.
The montages are a dig at corporations, with their soaring detachment to nature. They are framed as one would see them hung in the halls of a downtown office tower, with the hope of infiltrating the minds of the passing individuals, imparting a message to dwell upon on their way between meetings.
Now is a time for corporations to be reminded of their global influence and for artists to influence the power bodies in a manner which will create positive change. The female figure, in contemporary clothing within the drawings, alludes to the present day and is intended as a time capsule dating the works as a global warming response from the turn of the century. The female also alludes to but is not, from respect, the earth mother Papatuanuku, a carer and guardian of the land, who dreams of all things born from her and nurtured by her, including humankind.18 The individual is also the artist reflecting on the need for change. It is a surreal collation of found internet images of devastating natural disasters, my own contemporary furniture designs and myself as the mediator between the two - conducting business, existing, contemplating, dreaming, and reporting.
In this project I am investigating desire, environmental psychology and effects upon emotional states by looking at design and sustainable outcomes through materials and form. It looks in a more flexible manner at the possibilities of unexpected materials - I want to create an interface between the products and the user, and design beyond the aesthetic, investigating the core elements of consumerism and happiness. These works are not concretely about themselves, however they represent questions and stand as markers for a series of conversations about consumption, desires, formalism, design and the environment.