A 'Design Special' featuring textile designers Otto and Spike, furniture maker Khai Liew, a new book celebrating wallpaper design, and Kate Vigo performs.
This week Art Nation presents a 'Design Special' which looks at ways in which Australian designers are contributing to the world of design.
Art Nation's host Fenella Kernebone visits the Melbourne-based company Otto and Spike, a company whose work resonates with a new generation of consumers looking for original garments. Otto & Spike is a unique 'artisan manufacturer' practising traditional crafts and producing beautiful weaves and knits. The company's products are the result of a 40-year commitment to knitting and the use of premium Australian and New Zealand lambswool, eschewing the short-life cycle of mass production.
The program also features Malaysian-born, Adelaide-based Khai Liew, a maker of meticulously-crafted furniture. Liew started out as a valuer and conservator of early Australian furniture and was in his mid 40s before he designed his first piece. "Years of taking furniture apart in the restoration process has enabled me to examine and study techniques of furniture construction from various countries and cultures from different artistic movements and centuries, '' he says.
Plus Art Nation reviews a new book Wallpaper, which looks at the history of wallpaper design dating back to the 1840s. Australians have had a long love affair with wallpaper. The Historic Houses Trust of NSW has documented that relationship through its substantial wallpaper collection and now a new book. The collection, which dates from around 1840 to the present day, has been amassed from a variety of sources and comprises fragments steamed from walls, rolls left over from papering houses and sample books from local merchants.
To close the show, Melbourne indie-pop outfit Kate Vigo and the Underground Orchestra perform in the Art Nation studio. |
