Winter break

During the holiday break you may be interested in keeping you hand, head and eye in designer|maker mode by taking a look a range of competitions open to design and visual art students.

First up, TheNewDowse Friends Student Craft/Design Award open to all students enrolled in a tertiary level art, craft, design programme, find out more here.

Next, ‘Second Time Around: A Competition for Art Work made from Found and Re-Cycled Materials’. For entry forms and more information please contact the Mairangi Arts Centre at PO Box 65 121 Mairangi Bay, or phone 4782237 to request entry form.

Going global, consider the international design competition, ‘Design for Happiness’, organised in association with the Cumulus Kyoto 2008 International Design Conference. This competition is open to students of Cumulus the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media of which the Unitec School of Design is a member.

Finally, check out the Muji Award 02 International Design Competition with it’s theme exploring the notion of ‘Reinvention’.

Sarah Munro | 3d Munch

Join the 3D Munch crowd this Monday 7 May, 12pm in the 3d Seminar Room, to meet with Sarah Munro who will be talking about her experience as the 2006 Frances Hodgkins Fellow, an art residency based at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Sarah is a multi media artist who completed her doctorate in Fine Arts from Elam, at the University of Auckland in 2005.

Best in Show

Untitled Jasmine Clark, Untitled Rachel Bell, Oh, it's just a pattern Kate Barton

If you haven’t already done so, make time to visit Objectspace to check out the round-up of selected work by object graduates from all over the country. Best in Show for 2007 features work from three Unitec Bachelor of Design 3D majors, Kate Barton, Rachel Bell and Jasmine Clark. Objectspaces’s third annual curated survey of emerging designer|makers is an important component of the centres role in fostering innovative craft and design.

Web trawler

Solar-do-nothing Machine, Eames Studio, 1957

With an eye on a number of Object studio engagements and finger on the mouse button, I’ve taken the liberty – and will do so on a regular basis – of linking to a selection of websites with content that is germane to some of your current projects, see if you can call them . . .

Cast-off with Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting at the Museum of Arts & Design (used to be the American Craft Museum) in New York.

Move on through to Carlos Garaicoa at the ICA, Philidelphia (also on show at Turbulence, the 3rd Auckland Triennial, in the New Gallery), then hang a right and look in at Nicole Cherubini as well.

Read The Matt & Ron Show written by Sam Jacob of Strange Harvest, then check his practice at FAT, (Fashion, Architecture, Taste).

And finally, DIY joy at foldschool, with a collection of corrugated-cardboard furniture designs for children, freely available for download from Swiss-based designer, Nicola Enrico Stäubli.

Danny Rowlandson | 3d Munch

Kizaemon Ido teabowl, Korea, Yi dynasty (16th century)

A reminder that Danny Rowlandson, School of Design Ceramics and Glass lecturer, is presenting a seminar, ‘Japanese Ceramics & Zen Philosophy’, this coming Monday 26 March from 12.00–1pm, in the 3d Seminar room on the first floor of Bldg 76 (Rm 076-2069). This presentation is the second BDes 3d Munch lecture for the 2007 season. Please join us and feel free to bring your lunch.

Craftwerk 17.03.07

As part of the AK07 programme, the first Craftwerk event for 2007 will take place in the famed Spiegeltent, a hand-built and sewn structure built in 1920, and used since then as a unique venue for festivals around the world. The Spiegeltent is situated at the AK07 Festival Hub – RED SQUARE @ Britomart.

Providing a showcase for young and emerging creatives who distribute select ranges of handmade objects, independently produced publications and music. Alongside the craft, art, zine and music stalls Craftwerk also features live, local music: The Gladeyes, Artisan Guns, Bear Cat and Teacups will all be performing.

Items for sale cover anything from soft toys to laser cut jewellery to zines and comics, screen-printed stationery, hand-painted wood badges, limited edition 7"s, hand sculpted buttons, perspex lockets, hand-printed tshirts, arcade game appliqued cushions and bags, plastic cast brooches, framed hand embroideries, paintings and more . . .

Recuerdos de Mexico!

Cihuateteo, Margarita Fick, (papel recortado, detail)

An intimate collection of Mexican votive objects and emphemera has been installed in Pitch Black (the re-branded Bldg 76 exhibition space) by jeweller, Ilse-Marie Erl, who travelled throughout the region on sabatical in 2004. Don’t miss – exhibition closes Friday 23 March.

The PM Hit List

Groove & Long neck bottles Hella Jongerius 2000

Over to you right, you’ll see I’ve added a side-bar, in which a list of Provocative Material exemplars from the field contemporary Object practice beginning to take shape. While these designer/makers span a diverse field of engagement, they share a common, questioning criticality within their practices – characterised by experimentation, intervention, collaboration, not to mention a dose of good humour.

Allow yourself the time to investigate this quartet of Flash-driven sites, laden with rich content and intriguing interfaces, framed by a range of aesthetic and social contexts.

Closer to home, please take a look at Freestyle, a current online exhibition showcasing emerging and established designer/makers in Australia.

For those of you who are finding a need for an antidote to all this ‘clean-living’ – try a little sex and death, mixed with a dose of black humour at Design is Evil, courtesy of Icon magazine.

Finally, a downloadable BDes Object timetable in pdf format, giving a sense of all students schedules, on a single a4 sheet, has been added to the Studio Materials sidebar for your edification. If anyone spots an error, please come back to me.

Inaugral 3D Munch!

Albino Wood in Blue Ribbons (detail) Yasmin Dubrau 2007

The artist, Yasmin Dubrau, will launch the 2007 3D Munch seminar series with a floor talk in Snowhite gallery, on Monday 12 March, starting at 12pm. Please take the time to join in with other 3D major students and support this essential collegial project. See you there!

Getting into shape

Now we’re through Orientation for 2007, have spent some time getting to know our Jewellery colleagues, found studios and received the first briefs for the year, it’s time get into shape for the coming semester.

Given the profound change in the constituency of BDes Object staff and students, the pathway, in order to prosper, will need to anticipate, reconfigure and occupy the critical space between product, sculpture, jewellery & interior design.

Logically and traditionally, the materials and technologies that have been called to account – and continue to be – are wide ranging: ceramics, glass, wood, metals, plastics, resin, weaving, textile, fibre.

An essential focus of your engagement within the Object programme will be conceiving and composing a valid, desirable, sustainable blueprint for designermakers, that will be encouraged and supported by community and stakeholders alike.

We, and I mean that in the collegial ‘we’, are in the business of training as designermakers, and we will need to be seen to practice and engage in the physical world of materials and the production of objects, afresh.

To maintain craft practice and engage with newly (re-) configured complexities/possibilities in the applied and digital arts, the pathway will need to critically, honourably and realistically establish a domain of which it is proud to be the inhabitant.

Tableau Vivant

Les Sauvages de la mer Pacifique 1804 (detail) by Dufour

Welcome to the Object pathway for 2007, please find your schedule for week one of the academic year plus a copy of the 3D Tableau brief for download, if required.

Orientation 2007.pdf
2007 3D group project.doc

Some of you may have missed the mini-presentation I gave on Wednesday morning, that briefly showcased the work of Jeff Wall, Boyd Webb and the Dynamo-ville collective. Three examples of practice that offer an introductory range of approaches to the notion of tableau vivant. Have a look at the pdf if you missed it.

Tableau Vivant.pdf