Melbourne-based furnishings designer and maker Julian Leigh Could considers themselves an artist of kinds. Their merchandise very a lot blur the road between artwork and design, merging Duchamp’s readymades sensibilities with a splendidly gothic styling that provides rise to items which can be genuinely curious and exhausting to look away from. They’re additionally joyously experimental, embracing a spectrum of disciplines and mediums abruptly.
As Julian explains, “My work is about redefining on a regular basis objects by new narratives, materials experimentations and types.” The outcome features a pair of glass goblets linked by chains (Unity Rituals), an outsized aluminium gentle becoming the place gentle will get out by breaks within the materials (Torn) and a thorned rest room paper holder (Prickly Potty). The surprise in these items is that the performance isn’t all the time instantly evident and this play of ambiguity brings a definite objet d’artwork high quality to every, which means none would look misplaced in a up to date artwork gallery.
Not surprisingly, Julian has exhibited extensively since graduating from an affiliate diploma in furnishings design from RMIT, together with at quite a lot of Melbourne Design Weeks and on the Nationwide Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne Now: No Home Fashion, whereas in 2022, they undertook a Pier 2 Artist-in-Residence on the Taiwan Design Expo.
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Julian’s artistic inspiration comes from private experiences and so they make works that mirror on sure intervals of their life. Typically working in aluminium, Julian doesn’t imagine in following set guidelines and easily likes to provide issues that don’t exist. It’s an ideology greatest utilized to their Introspection sequence of one-off, collectible mirrors made totally from aluminium. “These objects, which reconfigure our notions of the home wanting glass, actually set my design type in movement,” says Julian. “Introspection depicts my very own private progress and evolution at a time and place when the world felt significantly weak. I needed to ask the viewer to look at themselves from one other perspective and to glimpse the world as seen by my eyes.”
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The thorns that they connect to lots of their designs are made out of scraps of aluminium which can be melted down and so nothing is wasted within the course of. This motif has turn out to be considerably of a signature attribute that though ornamental, can be useful. Whereas Julian will exhibit a cupboard at this 12 months’s Rigg Design Prize, they proceed to push the boundaries on each artwork and design. “I really feel there are all the time new methods to do one thing,” they are saying. “And I like to seek out what these new methods are.”
