Australian industrial designer Adam Goodrum and French marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur have been awarded the 2024 Melbourne Design Week Award for their collaboration: ‘The Kissing Cabinet’.
Announced on the opening day of Melbourne Design Week, Goodrum and Seigneur – working together as Adam&Arthur (A&A) – are the recipients of the annual $5000 prize, which recognises an outstanding contribution to the Design Week program and the Australian design industry.
Under A&A, Goodrum’s furniture and surface pattern designs have been realised with Seigneur, who brings expertise in straw marquetry, a highly specialised technique that appeared in Europe in the 1600s.
Working in collaboration since 2017, they create furniture pieces that embody the cultural and historical significance of centuries-old craft techniques, all the while maintaining a contemporary aesthetic.
For Melbourne Design Week 2024, Goodrum and Seigneur produced The Kissing Cabinet.
In the 1800s, such pieces of mechanical furniture traditionally encompassed cabinets, desks and bookcases, often featuring concealed chambers. A&A’s cabinet unfolds as it turns inside out to reveal a hidden compartment before closing in the form of ‘kissing lips’.
Its curvaceous silhouette and vibrant, patterned surface meld tradition with contemporary innovation, underscoring the evolution of craft and design across centuries.
“We are thrilled to receive the Melbourne Design Week Award presented by Mercedes Benz and very humbled especially given the calibre of work by so many individuals and studios,” Goodrum and Seigneur of A&A said.
“Melbourne Design Week presents incredible work by emerging and established artists and designers and it is an honour for our work and practice to be recognised.”
Senior Mualgal artist Paula Savage took home the Melbourne Design Week Award in 2023 for a body of work that celebrated the cultural heritage of Moa Island.
Previous recipients of the award also include Zero Footprint Repurposing by Revival Projects in 2022, an Australian-first facility that enables the storage and reuse of materials from demolition sites, and A New Normal in 2021, a rooftop exhibition that proposed ways for Melbourne to become an entirely self-sufficient city by 2030.
A&A’s The Kissing Cabinet is on display at Tolarno Galleries until 1 June 2024.
Lead image: Installation view of The Kissing Cabinet featuring designers Adam Goodrum and Arthur Seigneur presented by Tolarno Galleries, on display from 25 May–1 June at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne Design Week 2024. Image courtesy of A&A and Tolarno Galleries. Photo: Andrew Curtis
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