Established in 1976, Design Tasmania has become one of Australia’s leading not-for-profit design organisations. With the promotion of design and craft through exhibitions, collection, retail, workshops and colloquiums central to everything the organisation does, it’s not surprising that the annual Women in Design Colloquium boasts an incredible speaker lineup of Australia’s leading female designers across all design disciplines and hundreds of guests eager to connect and learn from their peers, colleagues and idols.
This year’s colloquium is inspired by the theme Agents for Change: Women Leading Design. Ahead of the two-day event starting on Friday 01 November at Design Tasmania Gallery, Australian Design Review talked with the curators, professor Emerita Harriet Edquist, architectural historian and curator, RMIT Architecture and Urban Design, and Dr. Helen Norrie, architecture and design academic at the University of Tasmania’s School of Architecture and Design about their approach to curating the colloquium and the expanding influence that women in design are having across Australia.
Harriet Edquist: Helen [Norrie] and I discussed the composition of the event together. I chose the three speakers in the morning, and Helen chose the designers for the afternoon session. We each chose the format for our sessions.
I am interested in how design cultures are built – they don’t just manifest themselves – and this question was at the heart of my most recent exhibition ‘Radical Utopia’ at RMIT Gallery (2023), which looked at Melbourne’s design culture in the 1980s. While the gallery was packed with designed objects, they were arranged around forms of communication and engagement – studio cultures, exhibitions, fashion parades, retail outlets, magazines, journals, political activism on the street and so on. I’m interested in investigating some of these ideas and questions in Tasmania.
Helen Norrie: I was interested in expanding the idea of how design cultures don’t just manifest themselves but are created both through conscious construction as well as via more intuitive and embryonic processes.
For the afternoon session of the colloquium, I’ve selected people who I feel consciously go about constructing a specific ecosystem in which they work. Each of these designers are as interested in the process that underpins their work as the product that is produced.
We wanted to bring together designers of diverse disciplines who don’t know each other but would have a strong affinity with each other’s work and practice. We were interested in the way that each designer fosters the relationships and interactions between people, place, materials and ideas, and how this informs their work process and product.
HN: I don’t think this is relevant, or the purpose of the colloquium. It’s not so much about what women bring that male colleagues don’t, it’s more about showcasing interesting people and projects. As the design sector is traditionally dominated by men, or at least men seem to dominate the consciousness of the procession, Women in Design focuses on giving visibility to a more diverse range of practitioners. It showcases designers whose work might not necessarily be the most seductive objects or conform to dominant ‘trends’, but has a set of ideas or values that resonate.
HE: I’m not sure I would ask this question if the anticipated answer is some sort of female essentialism. Women bring to the various design industries in which they work their participation, and the more diverse the sector is, the richer and more sustainable it will be.
HE: Often single events like our colloquium don’t have an earth-shattering immediate impact, but they are a part of a greater movement that we have witnessed in Australia over the past couple of decades that is recording, celebrating and understanding women’s participation in and contribution to design. For example, Design Tasmania has been hosting the Women in Design event since 2015, so has been at the forefront of this movement, and this commitment builds momentum and awareness over time.
This iteration of the Design Tasmania event is particularly interested in looking at how we build broad-based design ecologies in communities. The first three speakers —NGV publisher Megan Patty, Melbourne University academic Karen Burns and Parlour advocate Justine Clark — will discuss their professional practices and their roles in helping to build the infrastructure that supports design: publishing, research, working with archives and collections, public exhibitions and events, professional mentoring and so on. The designers will discuss their design ideas, influences and strategies.
So, on one hand, we have a broad-brush look at some of the key pieces that we need to build a vibrant design culture, and on the other, we have a group of successful women designers from different disciplines, from Tasmania and the mainland, talking about how they do it.
It’s worth mentioning that some design fields are well stocked with women. Jewellery, fashion and textile design, for example, have historically been areas where women could find a place as designers. Others, such as industrial design and automotive design, have fewer women in the major design studios, although this is changing, particularly in the object and furniture space.
The past two decades have seen a seismic shift in the notoriously male-dominated architecture profession, and plenty of women now lead their own studios and take on prominent roles as advocates for the profession. Landscape architecture has always attracted women who were instrumental in the early formation of the profession in Australia and, while they have not always been visible in the professional hierarchy, this is changing.
Design is a varied domain and we will hear from women across this spectrum. Jeweller Emma Bugg, furniture maker Marlo Lyda, speculative designer Marta Figueiredo, landscape architect Simone Bliss and architect Liz Walsh. Relatively new fields of design, such as systems design, have also offered opportunities to women, as we will hear about regenerative design from Vanessa Ward.
HN – One of the key values of this event is the network that has been built across nearly 10 years. The relatively small scale of the event means that everyone gets a chance to talk to each other, and the dinner on Saturday provides a chance for discussions to continue and friendships and relationships to grow. Many guests have attended the event several times, and it might be the only time that they see each other, so I really enjoy the ‘reunion’ aspect of everyone getting together. It’s also an opportunity to bring some of the leaders in a range of design fields to Tasmania, to be part of our community here on the island.
HE: These Design Tasmania events are always about bringing new ideas from prominent practitioners to the fore, and creating a forum for learning new things. The event brings like-minded women together to share stories and network, opening up some great conversations and opportunities. The event also affords our presenters the opportunity to reflect on their practice in a public forum, which can be a powerful tool to take stock of their work, invite feedback and engage in conversations around it.
This form of reflective practice can be a useful outcome for the speakers. On the other hand, the speakers offer the audience successful models of practice and demonstrate how women can create powerful mechanisms to support women and their careers.
HN: Taking time to share and reflect on practice, and to consider your work in the context of other disciplines, is really useful. I particularly enjoy the richness of the interdisciplinary connections that this event fosters. It’s interesting to consider how the ideas, values and techniques from one discipline can be reflected through other practices and approaches.
HE: Collaboration across disciplines is expected today. People understand that the problems we face as a global community can’t be solved by one heroic person or discipline. Architecture, for example, can’t solve anything without an understanding of its place in the community and its responsibilities to Country and to the future. To grapple with these issues requires a great deal of knowledge from people outside the profession and a willingness to learn. A successful design process is one where all these forces are brought into play on the final outcome.
HN: I think that design is, by nature, a multi-disciplinary practice. For example, jewellery is about understanding materiality, as is architecture, which is also interested in narrative and social connection. Understanding the common interests, values and approaches of various disciplines helps us to see our own disciplines in new lights.
HE: I’m hoping that my experience is that of our audience and speakers – an exciting opportunity to catch up with and learn from a group of very inspiring women. It is rare, I think, to have this varied group of women designers and design advocates assembled together. As a curator, I’ll no doubt reflect on the event itself and perhaps start to think about some future projects!
HN: This is one of my favourite events in the Design Tasmania calendar as it always brings together interesting people with new perspectives, and a couple of degrees of separation. The interaction between speakers and participants is one of the most interesting aspects, with the dinner on Saturday providing a great opportunity to extend conversations seeded during the colloquium sessions.
The session that I have curated is specifically designed to bring together six very interesting Tasmanian designers who currently don’t know each other. I have a hunch that they will really enjoy getting to know one other, both personally and professionally, and perhaps we’ll see some interesting collaborations come from these new introductions.
It’s also always lovely to spend the weekend in the wonderful Design Tasmania building, and this year we will also be at the new University of Tasmania Inveresk campus and have the chance to visit the latest buildings designed by Wardle.
Find out more about the speaker line up and full program at Design Tasmania