The present era of contemporary Western Australian furniture design can be thought of as beginning under the influence of David Foulkes-Taylor (1956 until his death in 1966).
Perth based Australian Fine China, the only maker of porcelain in Australia and New Zealand, is currently using a number of artist-designers to move from being a stolid china manufacturer for railways and cafes to one whose products are seen in top flight restaurants in the big hotels, in classy tourist venues and now on the dining tables of the nation. They have some way to go to entice Australians to purchase the 'local product' for their homes but they are making steady progress.
Exhibition review Masters Exhibitions 1996
12-28 September: Greg Geraghty, Johnathon Dady, Paul Dryga, Namchou Chitma
10-26 October: Rhonda Wheatland, Amanda Poland, Helen Stacey, Elizabeth Abbott, Brian Lynch
7- 23 November: Greg Fullerton, Danielle O'Brien, Julia McGuire, Harekrishna Bag,
University of SA Museum, Adelaide SA
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum began collecting artefacts relating to industrial design in the late 1980s. Since then a number of designers and consultancies have been represented in the collection. The author, curator of Industrial Design, Innovation and Marketing at the Powerhouse tells the story of these unsung heros and heroines of the everyday.
Interview with Andrew Rogers, Director of the ARID industrial design group (within the University of Adelaide's Research precinct). They spoke about the seductive blurrings of boundaries between man and soft machine.
Book review Know-how, the guide to innovation in Australia
Interactive CD Rom published by Powerhouse Publications,
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney NSW
Macintosh/Windows
RRP $99.95
A unique exhibition curated by Steve Ronayne (owner of Aptos Cruz Galleries) held at theJam Factory Gallery in 1996 'South Australia - Emerging crucible of contemporary design' showed just how many local designer-makers of contemporary craft are adopting industrial processes in their work.
What landscape architects in Australia have been doing since about 1970 is to begin to address the Australian lanscape in all its extraordinariness and vastness - as a subject for design and interpretation in the creation not only of our settlements but all those places where we may leave our mark, even if we don't inhabit them.
Whilst on a global scale Australia still dawdles on ecodesign, pockets of cutting-edge research and design are moving ahead with international recognition. Overview of events. In 1991 RMIT in Melbourne hosted the EcoDesign 1 Conference 1989-1992 Designers for the Planet, Perth WA Society for Responsible Design (1990 - ) NSW Re-Design Group Melbourne, Victoria (1991-93).
Despite the pull of the outback and the image of the Aussie bushman, the majority of modern Australians are urban dwellers, strung around the perimeter of the Continent. Little known to the outside world beyond our cultural icons of the kangaroo and the koala, few look to Australia as a source of contemporary design in any form, let alone fashion. Until recently, the global fashion market has seen fit to ignore the rest of our antipodean designers.
Based in Fremantle, Western Australia, Desert Designs (begun in 1984) is a concept marketing company that deals with authentic Aboriginal art works and acts as a nexus with manufacturing industries to facilitate their transition into products and their entry into retail markets.