Gradient invites a group of WA furniture designer/makers to showcase their perspective on change; between utility and art, the traditional and contemporary, the past and the future. The exhibition is a call to contemplate the roles that the objects we produce play in people’s lives, and how transitions in design, materials and concepts mirror ongoing shifts in society. 

Designers must be reactive to an ever-shifting landscape of local and global manufacturing. The recent native timber logging ban, alongside the increasing cost of imported raw materials, leaves WA designers with their own set of conditions to navigate. In response, they craft new narratives and ways to work, also mindful of issues such as over-consumption and sustainability.

Gradient encourages us to see furniture not just as objects of use, but as active participants in the narrative of change, reflecting back at us our own adaptability, identity, and endless capacity for reinvention.

Participating designers:

Alex Malkovic
Disordinary
Duzi Objects
Fosax
Jack Flanagan
Kartika Laili Ahmad
Manner
Marshall Wood
Objects of Agency
Olive Gill-Hille
Pivello Terrazzo
Studio Honour

Curator: Mark Lilly / Manner

Event celebration

Saturday 19 Oct, 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Join us to meet the designers and celebrate the opening of the exhibition. All are welcome.

Open times:

Friday 18 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Saturday 19 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Saturday 19 Oct, 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Monday 21 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Tuesday 22 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Wednesday 23 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Thursday 24 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm
Friday 25 Oct, 11:00am – 4:00pm

For questions about this event, please contact the organiser.

Although Mark Lilly has been making furniture for over a decade, it took a move from London to Boorloo, Perth, in 2018 for him to really settle into his design sensibilities. Soon after, Manner was created to embody his creative aspirations.

Being a self-taught designer and maker, Mark likes to experiment with an honest, DIY aesthetic, but with a contemporary direction. Inspirations swing from the likes of Keiji Ashizawa and Naoto Fukusawa, to Alvar Aalto and Dieter Rams. The result is furniture and homewares sitting somewhere between contemporary Japanese design, and modernist Scandinavian form. Mark created Manner to act as a ‘design diary’, to document his ever-evolving experiments with form and function, but also to act as inspiration for others to give it a go themselves.