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| Nathan Gray silkscreen print on paper, 2007 |
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Aggregates and assemblages: Nathan Gray
Melissa Loughnan
Artist Nathan Gray works across drawing, collage, silk-screening and assemblage, and possesses a particular
affinity for colour. His paper compositions are cut and combined with found objects and small-scale
sculptures to create 'aggregations'.
Gray has been exploring aggregation, a natural process in which growth begins from a single point and
progresses to some kind of limit, as a metaphor for constructing his imagery and installations for much of his career.
Gray creates complex, ever-growing sequences of forms that are a blend of biological imperative and
tactile pleasure. The work often references human responses to plant and animal forms where highly
decorative sculptures uncover botanic micro-worlds and havens. |
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Team Effort
Min Wang is design director of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the dean
of the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing.
After a tough competition between design studios, ad agencies and design schools
in China, CAFA won the bid to design the prized Olympic medals and a series of
thirty-five pictograms for the Paralympics.
"We were lucky we won most of the projects we competed for," said Wang. "We had
thirty students working on the core graphics, then each group was divided into
subgroups, each working on a different project."
"Students have fresh ideas. They have no boundaries or baggage – or experience.
They do what they like, whether it's realistic or do-able or not. They don't
think about things too much; they just come out with interesting concepts."
"We worked together and narrowed our selection from a large number of ideas and
submitted them to the Beijing Olympic Committee. The committee then narrowed
the field further and we put together a team of the best students, postgraduates
and faculty members to finalise the design. This process was much more complicated
than in a commercial design studio. It was a big team and I was just a small part of it." |
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Interview – Richard Seymour
Richard Seymour, product designer and co-founder of London-based SeymourPowell, was in Melbourne
for the AGIdeas Conference in April.
Seymour's upfront and direct style of communicating makes him popular amongst designers and those
who have heard him speak. It has proved to be a very effective way of getting to the heart of
his clients' issues as well.
Seymour talked with Belinda Stening, Curve editor, about communication, his partnership with Dick
Powell and the future of the business landscape.
How have you developed the courage to talk to clients in such a direct way?
I think it came from two places. Firstly, it grew out of frustration. There are so many layers
of marketing gobbledygook that mean nothing that I get very frustrated at finding a way through
it all. Secondly, to be brutally frank, the harder you beat them, the happier they seem to be with you. |
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Some like it slow
Laura Traldi
In pre-industrial times, the success of an object was defined less by the design than
by the ability of the artisan to work the materials.
With luxury now increasingly identified with one-off designs and with the current wave
of renewed interest in local, traditional craftsmanship, the concept of quality is being re-discussed.
Thus, when Giles Hutchinson Smith and Henry Neville – managing director and president, respectively,
of Mallet, the antiques house with galleries in London and New York – were told by some of their
clients about their growing desire for contemporary objects of similar quality to fine antiques,
they were not all that surprised. |
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East melds with west
Laura Traldi
People who are passionate about objects – designers above all, but also artists,
artisans and general enthusiasts of material culture – know that the value of
an artifact goes well beyond its function or appearance.
Hence, when it comes down to judging objects, what counts the most is not so much
what they are (or what they are capable of doing) but how they were conceived, developed
and made. After all, what makes a design timeless is not only excellent functionality and
superb looks – which might well fade away – but its role as a culture carrier, as a
messenger of the heartbeat of the society that created it.
In this sense, the OrienTales collection that Stefano Giovannoni and his long-time Japanese
collaborator Rumiko Takeda recently presented for the A di Alessi – and last April celebrated
with the publication of a book entitled {OrienTales: eastern stories through western eyes}
(published by Gli Ori, Pistoia, Italy) – could well be an excellent example of a cultural
bridge between the east and west. |
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The incredible lightness of being
Lightweight materials, as the name suggests, simply refer to materials that are light
in weight. However, whilst there are many materials that may be deemed light (tissue paper,
for instance), the category of lightweight materials we will look at here refers to those
that are of high strength for their weight (often referred to as the strength-to-weight ratio),
or have another important property relative to their weight (such as toughness).
In mechanical terms, there are different types of ‘strengths’ (tensile, compressive,
torsional, impact and so on), and materials are also measured according to the way
in which forces are applied. Some materials perform exceptionally well under tension
but poorly under compression (and vice versa).
Additionally, some materials can withstand incredible forces, but only for short durations
or for a few times before they fail, whilst others are more durable and can withstand
repeated application of forces. |
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Health delivery
Students and designers from Osaka University in Japan have been working for some
time now on a project they call PKD, or Peace-Keeping Design, in which they aim
to design solutions to problems with food-supply, housing and health in developing countries.
PKD is an initiative of the Progressive Inclusive Design office headed by designer Kazuo
Kawasaki and supported by the Medical Centre for Translational Research at Osaka University Hospital. |
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Life-saving design
Of the world’s total population, 5.8 billion people, or ninety per cent, have restricted
access to many products and services we take for granted, and nearly half do not have
reliable supplies of food or clean water, or access to shelter.
A growing movement among designers interested in creating low-cost solutions for this
other ninety per cent is explored in the exhibition, Design for the Other 90%. Designers,
engineers, students and academics, architects and social entrepreneurs from all over the
world are coming up with cost-effective ways to increase access to food and water, energy,
education, healthcare, revenue-generating activities and affordable transportation
for those who most in need. |
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