What did winning the 2017 Australian Furniture Design Award mean to you?

Place was the first major work where I balanced my head (conceptual thinking) with my heart (intuition). To win and receive positive feedback on the work has provided me with the confidence to trust in my process; which follows the unmeasurable and decisions not always able to be tracked back through a rational process. I also promised myself it was the last work I’d produce for competition, so phew!

How does being based in Alice Spring shape your design and practice?

Central Australia isn’t any more or less complex than anywhere else, but it is at a scale where you can understand and relate to most of the threads and layers that interplay. The town itself is dominated by the non-human; the landscape and the weather. The way the rain brings plants; bringing insects; which brings reptiles and birds, suddenly the place feels abundant and alive. The endless winter sunshine, the trying and increasingly desperate heat in summer. Being a member of a community that includes, but isn’t exclusive to humans. Someone used the word mytho-poetic to describe the region in a conversation recently, it vibrates with it.

 

 

Can you describe your philosophy behind your Different Thoughts collection?

There are conversations the living world desperately needs us to have. The way we relate to each other (human and more-than-human) is deeply flawed. Somewhere in the past we rationalised that humans were ‘above’ and of more value to everything else (and that some humans were worth more than others). Any assessment of this with our current understanding of how ecosystems works shows how untrue this is, and it’s impossible to ignore the damaging ramifications of this valuing. Different Thoughts are expressions of our current underlying and unhelpful moral metaphors and the wondrous possibilities of moving away from them and reconnecting with this miraculous planet! The Other is More Same Than Different, Our Edges Are Mist and The Moment Always Passes – but whose moment is it? I hope the collection provides rifts within the day that creates moments to pause, provoke reflection and make the potential we have for connection to each-other and the more-than-human the more desirable option.