Warm Design, 146 Artspace, 2017
Curated by Phoebe Adams and Sara Lindsay
Phoebe Adams, Murray Antill, Dr Philip Blacklow, Sean Coyle, Sarah Jones, Sara Lindsay, Dee Taylor Graham, and Dr Zoe Veness
146 Artspace, 146 Elizabeth Street Hobart 7000
Dates: 23 February to 23 March 2017
Opening Event: 23rd February 2017
Where does design end and art begin?
Studying design within an art school environment, at the Tasmanian College of the Arts, has enabled us to explore the potential of a hybridised practice. However this left us attempting to find our place between the thriving contemporary art scene in Tasmania and the established Tasmanian Designer/ Maker culture, hopeful that we could embrace the best of both.
We wondered how design can be warmed by the presence of emotional content, the expression of socio-political concerns, and how this could be communicated with honesty and authenticity. Warm design owes much to Queer Theory with its rejection of oppositional binary relationships. It does not exist in opposition to other forms of design or art practice. Unlike Critical design it is not dialectic in its questioning of the status quo. Warm Design does not proselytise to an audience but seeks to create a relationship with its “Interactors”.
Warm Design is our opportunity to explore the fertile ground between art and design. Participating artists and designers from a range of design disciplines including jewellery, ceramics, object and furniture design were asked how design can be warmed by the presence of emotional content, through ways of making, materiality and the expression socio-political concerns. Warm Design creates a conversation that questions the binary divide between art and design.
“Warm design is for me a distant memory, a connection with parents long gone, a splinter in my finger, the touch of bark, the smell of lemon scented gum”.
Sarah Jones 2016
Participating designers have been asked to create new work or reconceptualise previous work that explores how their Design practice is warm.
https://www.utas.edu.au/communications/general-news/all-news/where-does-design-end-and-art-begin
