Friday August 14 saw the opening of the Young Blood Designers Market at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo. Billed as an opportunity to buy direct from the best emerging design talent, the event was, sadly, a mixed bag with a tiny constellation of bright stars in a morass of market-stall tat.
Toyah Perry of New Crop with her coffee sack carry bags
First up from Melbourne was the affable Toyah Perry from New Crop. Using hessian coffee sacks that are normally discarded, she fashions lovely, satin-lined carry bags that are as easy on the eye as they are on landfill. The most pleasing aspect of their design, apart from their sustainability credentials, is the uniqueness imparted by the various designs printed on the source material.
A selection of Mattt's hand-made bags
Matt from Mattt made another appearance at Young Blood with his customisable hand-made shoulder bags. On display were some new fabric choices that resulted from a design competition he ran through his website. Using a digital fabric printer he’s recently installed in his Fitzroy studio and gallery, Matt has printed the winning designs and incorporated them into his range of bags. A nice example of crowd-sourced design, Mattt pays a 10% commission to the competition winners whenever a bag featuring their fabric design is sold.
Lightly's lacy plates, vessels and Chrysalis wall pieces
Lightly, headed up by Cindy Lee-Davies, had a selection of their diaphanous, lace-inspired plates and vessels on display. Our favourites, however, were the lovely Chrysalis wall-pieces, crafted by hand from reclaimed saucers (Cindy has given a new lease of life to over 4,000 to date!).
Andrew Bartlett's Flat 6 wine rack and a Jam Factory bloom holder
Representatives from the Furniture Studio at Adelaide’s Jam Factory also made the trip to Sydney, bringing with them some of their more portable work (check out their website for their larger pieces). Star of the display was Andrew Bartlett’s “Flat 6” wine rack. Beautifully crafted from hand cut, laminated Blackwood (no lasers here!), it’s sinuous, ultra-thin form belied the strength required to support six bottles of wine.
Damien Butler's elegant, hand-crafted time-pieces (check the translucent dial face!)
The brightest star however, despite having a stand that fell victim to the poor lay-out of the market, was Sydney-based Damien Butler. A true design polymath, Damien lectures in Architecture at Sydney university in addition to practising product, graphic and interior design. A graduate of sculpture and jewellery from Sydney’s COFA, it also seems he’s a dab hand at watch-making, exhibiting a range of beautiful, handcrafted watches under the DB brand. Built around a Swiss-made ETA movement (the same as you’ll find inside various Breitlings, Tag Heuers and Longines among others), Damien’s time pieces have the heft, finish and beautiful detailing of a true premium product, yet at prices ranging from AU$500 to AU$700, they’re a veritable, limited-run steal.
Despite the talent on show, the efforts of these enterprising young designers were overshadowed by poor overall curation (Chinese-made, polka-dot printed walking sticks anyone?) and shockingly inadequate event planning and management.
The massive crowd trying to get a look at the goods on display
The Friday night launch saw thousands of fee-paying visitors admitted to a dingy space that could hold a few hundred at best. Not only was it almost impossible to comfortably browse the stalls, many began expressing concerns for their safety as the flow of people through the confined space ground to a halt. Those who sought refunds, vowing to return on Saturday, would have found the situation barely improved.
It’s exciting that so much interest is being shown by the general public in Australia’s emerging designers but maddening that our institutions can’t properly support their development. It seems, based on the apology issued on Monday on the Sydney Design Festival website, that the Powerhouse Museum has learnt a valuable lesson (at the expense of the exhibitors and those who paid for entry) and we can only hope that subsequent markets will be better planned. Australia’s young blood truly deserves it.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Obviously this shows Sydneysiders are eager to get their hands on original, funky designs so hopefully someone’s realised they could make money off this (not so good) and do something about it (great!).
P.S. I love my Mattt bag
@Sydneysider,
Thanks for stopping by!
Judging by the crowds, us Sydney folk are super keen for this sort of event. Wouldn’t it be great to get together a really well-curated collection of designers and their products a few times a year? I know this is what Young Blood is trying to do, but if they keep on like this, perhaps Sydney folk wont be so keen any more… hmm.
Cheers for your input,
Drew
Wow! Wishing I could have been there so thanks so much for the great pics!
Australian designers rock!
Lightly/Cindy-Lee Davies’ plates are innovative and considered.
wonderful and innovative designs. the watch and butterflies especially caught my eye. its good to see such work from young designers.you are lucky to see them first hand.
Hi Ashely!
Yeah, it certainly is a treat to see this sort of design first hand, I just hope that we can encourage more of this kind of work in Sydney. Given that Damien’s watches were the only Sydney product of note, it seems our design scene needs a kick up the backside!
All the best,
Drew