Deyan Sudjic's team at the Design Museum have rustled up a clutch of brilliant, diverse young talents and granted each of them a separate area of the Design Museum to showcase their wares. Outside in the Design Tank, Richard Sweeney's Folding Light series plays with traditional papercraft and complex geometry, folding the former into exquisite, delicate and simple lights that completely belie the complexity of the latter.
The entrance hall has been delegated to Finn Magee's witty, thought-provoking Flat Life series, combining poster and product to boundary-defying effect. It's only on viewing the last image of the series one realises the anglepoise light or alarm clock are fully-functioning products, with a black electric chord plugged into a socket nearby. The effect is to challenge our perception of whether a product can function to the same effect, when represented simply as a two dimensional image.
Our favourite display was Sarah van Gameren’s 'Big Dipper'. What we love is the succinctness of the whole work. It's no small feat to engage a number of weighty design issues - from mass production values to eco awareness, accidental aesthetics to the role of machine, designer and audience - in one beautifully simplistic display. van Gameren's design dips 24 wicks in a duel circuit rotation one after another into molten wax, after twelve hours creating 24 wax chandeliers.
'I started experimenting by dipping wicks suspended from a brass chandelier into wax,' explains van Gameren, 'but I didn't like the fact I was always left with the brass at the end, so worked out how to make an entire chandelier from just wick by itself. I love playing with the distance between the designer and end product, the fact that I first design a machine and then shift responsibility onto the machine itself to design the product is what makes this project so interesting for me.'
Click here to see the works in situ at the Design Museum, and van Gameren operating the 'Big Dipper'.
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'Designers in Residence' runs until 14th October at the Design Museum
- Website
- http://www.designmuseum.org
- Address
- The Design Museum Shad Thames London SE1 2YD
