In 2020, Australia’s leading annual international design event, Melbourne Design Week, presents its largest program to date, with more than 300 events over 11 days. Programmed around the theme ‘How Can Design Shape Life?’, the festival comprises 85 exhibitions, 94 talks, 15 films, 22 tours and 16 workshops celebrating the best of local, national and international design. The expanding, state-wide festival is an initiative of the Victorian Government presented by Creative Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Keynotes will be presented by internationally-renowned architect Francis Kéré; design polymath and host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman; Fairphone founder Bas van Abel and award-winning Australian architecture studio NMBW.

Comedian and design nerd Tim Ross premieres his new live show Designing a Legacy that takes audiences on an architectural adventure into some of Australia’s most significant modernist houses.

Amsterdam-based artists, filmmakers, and designers Metahaven will present a keynote lecture at the NGV on 12 March. Metahaven Field Report is their first solo exhibition in Australia and is Presented by RMIT Design Hub Gallery and Melbourne Design Week / Melbourne Art Book Fair.

Tolarno Galleries, premieres A&A: Exquisite Corpse/Cadavre Exquis, a collaboration between designer Adam Goodrum and straw marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur from 12–22 March. Sophie Gannon Gallery presents Designwork 04, a solo exhibition of new works by Melbourne based designer Danielle Brustman encompassing interior, furniture, lighting and object design from 12–22 March. Gallery Sally Dan–Cuthbert travels from Sydney to exhibit Partu (Skin), the latest collaboration between remote cattle-station saddler Johnny Nargoodah and conceptual object designer Trent Jansen at Arc One, Flinders Lane from 12–21 March.
Full program to be released in February 2020

www.designweek.melbourne

Image Caption: Metahaven, Eurasia (Questions on Happiness), 2018.

In an unprecedented collaboration, ACCA, Carriageworks and Mona will present concurrent exhibitions of new work by three women artists: Frances Barrett (ACCA), Giselle Stanborough (Carriageworks) and Sally Rees (Mona), from March 2020.

Announced in October 2018, Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship awarded $100,000 to each of the three artists to create new work. Made possible by the estate of the late, Italian-born Australian artist, Katthy Cavaliere (1972-2012), each artist’s ambitious new project is focused at the intersection of installation and performance art practice.

At Carriageworks, Giselle Stanborough’s Cinopticon will contemporise philosopher Michel Foucault’s theory of the ‘panopticon’: instead of the few watching the many, today we watch each other and the few. In Cinopticon, Stanborough will examine web-based narcissism, corporate surveillance and the opacity of social media algorithms to explore how these coalesce to lead us through problematic terrain. Stanborough will work with her own personal online archive to create an immersive performance installation where audiences will see their reflection in unpredictable ways.

At ACCA, Frances Barrett will extend the parameters of the Fellowship’s solo commission to present new sonic compositions and live performances by multiple artists. Drawing on her background in performance, curating and collaborative models of making, Barrett will create a major sound installation in collaboration with Hayley Forward and Brian Fuata. It will be presented alongside specially-commissioned sound compositions by artists Nina Buchanan, Del Lumanta and Sione Teumohenga, whose works collectively address concepts including community building, healing and new environmental consciousness.

At Mona, Tasmanian artist Sally Rees will exhibit a new body of work centred around the ‘crone’. Adopting this folkloric archetype, Rees will challenge the perceived invisibility of ageing women in contemporary society, seeking to redefine the female elder as a powerful and transgressive figure.

Heide Museum of Modern Art is proud to announce highlights from its 2020 program, including Australia’s first in-depth exhibition of celebrated modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth, a major survey of renowned Australian artist Joy Hester’s haunting works on paper, and plans for a Healing Garden.

Next year’s program builds on the museum’s longstanding commitment to support and present the work of women artists with a significant retrospective of Australian sculptor Margel Hinder, the Australian premiere of award-winning Polish artist Agnieszka Polska, and solo exhibitions by contemporary artists Carolyn Eskdale and Stanislava Pinchuk (aka Miso). Heide will also stage the first museum survey of eminent Australian artist Robert Owen in Melbourne.

Image: Barbara Hepworth, Eidos 1947