Project by: FIONA LYNCH
Place: Collingwood, Melbourne Photographer: Lillie Thompson
Publications: YELLOWTRACE
Melbourne-based interior designer Fiona Lynch is opening a permanent gallery Work Shop in Collingwood, coinciding with NGV Melbourne Design Week. A curated showcase of experimental design, fine art, and objects, Work Shop will display work from Australian and international artists and designers, including commissioned and original pieces. By identifying commonalities across mediums and materials, Work Shop aims to unpack the relationship between art and design. Informed by Lynch’s early career in fine art, the gallery will serve as a testing ground for her eponymous interior design practice; somewhat of an experimental lab that gives audiences an unveiled insight into the creative process. “Prior to studying interior design I studied Fine Art at RMIT in Melbourne,” says Lynch. “This unique path has always been reflected in my work and the way we approach design. Work Shop will afford my studio and I the opportunity to explore this further… examining the dialogue between art and design in a way that challenges and inspires.”
Olivia Walker’s Living Ceramics Series results from construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. Walker’s process sees carefully shaped porcelain vessels undergo a form of material decay, before being rebuilt with a growth-like texture comprised of hundreds of individual pieces of clay. Speaking to the influence of material processes on art and artist, Walker’s vessels appear alive, imbued with the sense that they could either grow or deteriorate in plain sight. Throughout Jiaxin Nong’s contemporary paintings, the relationship between the conceptual and the physical is explored through her own concepts and method, with brisk brushstrokes that overlap and intertwine. The pieces showcased at Work Shop specifically explore expressions of movement and conflict that cannot remain static, rather continuously shifting and fluctuating.
