For the third year, Melbourne Fringe and Linden New Art present Design Fringe with its bold curatorial theme Speculation: Eight Billion Little Utopias. Design Fringe is an open-access experimental design program that supports artists, designers and makers at all career stages. This year’s theme sets designers free to craft unconventional materials into playful and provocative object designs, imagining alternate utopias.
Speculation: Eight Billion Little Utopias invites Australian designers to reimagine our societies, communities, politics, and allows ideals to be catalysts for conversations through alternative visions of design practice. Work will be speculative in its fullest interpretation: through materials, methodologies, approaches and an understanding of what constitutes design and how it can be a source of vision.
Speculation makes space for a new approach to design, one where imagination and provocation become of central concern, not to solve problems or make products, but to start conversations and prompt us to think about imaginary futures. Design as speculative design.
Twelve artists including Ash Allen, Emma Jackson, Hung Hin Chan, Ilan El, Jacky Cheng, Jake Williamson, Marta Figueiredo, Maryam Moghadam, Moya Delaney, Pattie Beerens, Phong Chi Lai and Sarah Muir-Smith, have answered the speculative design call, and pieces include:
A sculpture that embodies art and design in the Age of AI—a metaphorical play between algorithms and human creativity.
A coffee table that speaks to the friction of designing in a culture of hyper-curation and the pervasive feeling of sameness from social media
A captivating room divider that explores issues of women’s health and empowerment.
A stool that plays on the concept of humour, explicitly referencing a body part to elicit feelings of play in furniture design while still achieving its utilitarian goals.
A patchwork artwork that also reflects the diversity within our world, reminding us that collective strength arises from embracing our differences.
Exhibition Dates:
23 September – 26 November 2023, Linden New Art
Opening Night
Friday 22 September 2023, 6pm–8.30pm, Linden New Art
Keynote Talk – Designing Our Utopian Futures
Saturday 7 October 2023, 1–2.30pm, Victorian Pride Centre Theatrette
Tactile Tour
Wednesday 11 October 2023, 10am–12pm, Linden New Art
Meet the Designers
Sunday 15 October 2023, 1–2pm, Linden New Art
In Conversation > Possible, Probable & Preferable Futures
Saturday 21 October 2023, 1–2pm, Linden New Art
Image: Marta Figueiredo, I go to the depths of the ocean within the body of a woman, 2023, Photography by Jonathon Griggs.