Designing Bright Futures

Designing Bright Futures 2017

23 November 2017 - 31 January 2018

Australian Design Centre is proud to present, in partnership with UNSW Art & Design, Designing Bright Futures, 2017.

Designing Bright Futures surveys twelve of the most outstanding 2017 UNSW Art & Design graduating students across Bachelor and Masters of Design fields including: jewellery, textiles, graphics, object, interactive and spatial design.

Students have been chosen for the ways in which their work explores and promotes ideas of innovation and sustainable practice, capacity for social impact, commercial viability and the role of design in advancing well-being.

The designers are: Tulla Carson, Emma Dalling, Daniel Flynn, Jacalin King, Eugena Kouvaros, Bridget Long, Michelle Miller, Mia Sabel, Ruby Shapiro, Julia Sharkey, Olivia Spark and Jessica Zinga.

To assist these emerging talents, the Australian Design Centre will present one student with the ADC UNSW Art & Design Award.

ADC has a long and notable history of exhibiting and supporting UNSW Art & Design students and graduates and has worked with the university in recent years to present workshops, forums and events. 

This exhibition celebrates the optimism, ideas and ambitions of the next generation of designers and makers. Designing Bright Futures continues ADC’s commitment to supporting the work of makers and designers at every stage of their careers.

Special thanks to guest curators designer Liane Rossler and UNSW Art & Design's Stephen Goddard.

Designing Bright Futures is a satellite of the UNSW Student Exhibition Annual 17 and an exhibition partnership between Australian Design Centre and UNSW Art & Design.

Designing Bright Futures events:

Opening night
Join us for the opening celebrations of Designing Bright Futures 2017. Opening speakers include: Professor Marie Sierra, Deputy Dean of UNSW Art & Design, Liane Rossler and Lisa Cahill.
When: Thursday 30 November, 6 -8pm
Free event, bookings required.
RSVP here

Artists Talk and Tour
Take a guided tour and talk through the Designing Bright Futures exhibition with a selection of the outstanding graduating students who were selected to exhibit. The graduates will discuss ways in which their works explore and promote ideas of innovation and sustainable practice, capacity for social impact, commercial viability and the role of design in advancing well-being.
When: Saturday 25 November & Saturday 2 December
Time: 11.30am-12.30pm
Free event, booking required.

Explore previous Designing Bright Futures exhibitions here


Image: (Left) Mia Sabel, Rubbish Rescue, 2017. Participatory design activities. Photo courtesy of the artist. (Middle) Eugena Kouvaros, Woven Narratives, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist. (Right) Olivia Spark, Endlings, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Bridget Long

Restore, within the weave, prevails new perspectives to communicate the embedded narratives within material forms and expose mindful design approaches to inspire social behavioural change and habitual awareness.

Daniel Flynn

Daniel Flynn’s practice involves making large scale textile banners out of acquired drop sheets and applying illustrations and fragments of text across them to construct a narrative that is concerned with the complexities of everyday contemporary life.

Emma Dalling

Ritual Therapy seeks to address common anxiety-based behaviours in individuals. It aims to examine these behaviours, including fidgeting and accompanying intrusive thoughts, as possible catalysts for creative practice. 

Eugena Kouvaros

Woven narratives explores the value of textile art as a form of wearable protest, to establish an engagement between an often-marginalised art form and contemporary political concerns.

Jacalin King

Terra materia is a visual publication which endeavours to embody the intangible, mystical qualities of the Australian landscape as experienced through the walking body.

Jessica Zinga

Sea harvest investigates the potential for seaweed to become an alternative resource to hazardous plastics and chemicals that currently pollute our environment.

Julia Sharkey

MyCycle is a systematic approach to solving a design problem. It is a project that focuses on the use of bio-degradable and organic menstrual sanitary products.

Mia Sabel

Rubbish Rescue explores how the reuse of disposed objects from kerbside council clean-ups can provide a gateway towards a sustainable future of critical consumption where reuse is favoured over acquiring new.

Michelle Miller

Starlight Memorial is an architectural response to the lack of space in urban communities. The project proposes a new and unique commentary on how cemeteries are no longer a viable option for a sustainable future.

Olivia Spark

Endlings is an exploration into the declining Australian environment since European settlement. The installation is designed as a space of education and projection, to convey the real potential of the complete loss of critically endangered Australian flora.

Ruby Shapiro

Social Fabric is a range of experimental woven fabrics that form the basis of a voluntary workshop to be held with handloom weavers at the Khamir Craft Centre in the textile rich region of Kutcch, Gujarat, India.

Tulla Carson

Gathering encompasses a series of contemplative sculptural objects that represent a visual continuity between the Australian landscape and city sphere.