detail: Khai Liew, designer, Australia, born 1952, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, ceramist, Australia, born 1935, Gwyn [serving table], from the 'Collec+tors' series, 2010, Norwood, Adelaide, Queensland blackbean, kangaroo hide, waxed linen, porcelain, 106.0 x 152.0 x 47.0 cm; Gift of Michael Armitage, Susan Armitage, Philip Bacon AM, Colin and Robyn Cowan, Julian and Stephanie Grose, Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett, Jim and Andrea Katsaros, Diana Laidlaw AM, Sonia Laidlaw, Macquarie Group Foundation, David McKee, Pam McKee, Jillian Russell, Peter and Mary Sutherland, Janet Worth and future donors to the Collec+ors Appeal through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2012. Photograph by Grant Hancock

KHAI LIEW COLLEC+ORS

Now showing until 30 June 2013
Gallery 11
Free admission

The exquisite Collec+ors suite of furniture has been created by acclaimed designer Khai Liew in conjunction with eminent Australian artists Julie Blyfield, Kirsten Coelho, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Jessica Loughlin, Bruce Nuske and Prue Venables. Made in 2010 for that year’s SALA Festival, the suite was selected as the only Australian finalist in the international Designs of the Year awards held at the prestigious London Design Museum the following year.

The collaboration between designer and ceramic, glass and jewellery artists has resulted in an outstanding range of furniture that consists of two cabinets, an armchair, a cupboard, serving table and screen. Wendy Walker, author of the Collec+ors catalogue, wrote of Liew: ‘In an ongoing invigoration of his design vocabulary, the confident designs for Collec+ors simultaneously incorporate and reinvent representative elements from earlier works, whilst exploring the possibilities offered by collaboration – the angularity and linenfold strategies of the Kirsten chair; the strict geometry of the Jessica screen (strikingly aligned with glass panels); the chamfered surfaces and unprecedented organic, Art-Nouveau-like quality of the Julie cabinet on a stand; the flow and diminution of mass integral to the Gwyn serving table and the almost animated disposition of the Prue cupboard’. The Bruce cabinet on a stand is a contemporary interpretation of E.W. Godwin’s Aesthetic Movement sideboard, seen by Liew and Nuske in London and the original impetus for the Collec+ors suite.

In the adjacent gallery a selection of works of art by the artists involved in Collec+ors offers the Gallery visitor the opportunity to become acquainted with their individual practices.

 

detail: Khai Liew, designer, Australia, born 1952, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, ceramist, Australia, born 1935, Gwyn [serving table], from the 'Collec+tors' series, 2010, Norwood, Adelaide, Queensland blackbean, kangaroo hide, waxed linen, porcelain, 106.0 x 152.0 x 47.0 cm; Gift of Michael Armitage, Susan Armitage, Philip Bacon AM, Colin and Robyn Cowan, Julian and Stephanie Grose, Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett, Jim and Andrea Katsaros, Diana Laidlaw AM, Sonia Laidlaw, Macquarie Group Foundation, David McKee, Pam McKee, Jillian Russell, Peter and Mary Sutherland, Janet Worth and future donors to the Collec+ors Appeal through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2012. Photograph by  Grant Hancock