Melbourne, Australia: Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present a major new work by A&A for Melbourne Design Week, in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria.
A&A is the ongoing collaboration between Sydney-based industrial designer Adam Goodrum and straw-marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur, who was born and raised in France and now lives in Melbourne.
Dating back to 17th-century Europe, straw marquetry, or marqueterie de paille, is a painstaking technique that involves decorating a surface using slivers of rye straw.
On display in Gallery 1, The Kissing Cabinet is A&A's largest and most significant furniture design to date. It is the first in a series of 'towers' conceived in 2021 and launched specially for Melbourne Design Week 2024.
Standing more than two metres tall and weighing in excess of 100 kilograms, The Kissing Cabinet presents as a tower covered top to bottom with intricate checkerboard patterns of straw marquetry in navy blue.
On two of its four sides, an ivory-gold line formed of three semi-circles describes a vertical sine wave.
But a clever mechanical device inside the tower's base causes it to metamorphose before one's eyes when opened by hand.
We see that is is comprised of four slender columns, each of which turns 90 degrees to reveal a completely different form, eight hidden drawers and 12 more colours.
As The Kissing Cabinet turns inside out, each ivory-gold curve widens, transforming into six dazzling half-cones topped with dark blue 'nibs' like pencils.
Three are positive half-cones and three are negative.
Standing in just the right spot, it's impossible tell which is convex and which is concave, such is the complexity of Adam's design and the precision of Arthur's handiwork.
Between the six 'pencil tops', a banded diamond pattern emerges in a rich palette of yellow, amber, pink, maroon, emerald grey.
Meanwhile, the cabinet's other two sides are similarly transfigured.
One resolves into a blue hourglass shape punctuated by two gold circles with blue 'irises' like a pair of eyes; the other, into two pairs of gold circles with two blue circles squeezed between them.
As with its navy-blue exterior, the areas of ivory-gold straw have been laid down in a shimmering checkerboard pattern, providing added luminosity and depth.
This unique work has taken Adam and Arthur more than three years to realise and represents a significant leap forward.
Effectively two sculptures in one, The Kissing Cabinet should be viewed from all sides to fully appreciate its astonishing ingenuity.
'It's striking how different the piece can look depending on where you're standing,' says Adam.
The shapeshifting design is based in part on the sphericon, a 'paradoxical solid' made from the combination of four half-cones, which A&A have employed previously.
Owing to its unusual geometric properties, the sphericon enables a design that incorporates both linear and circular elements.
The Kissing Cabinet's underlying form was made in Melbourne from a carbon composite biomaterial on A&A's own 3D printer, recently imported from Germany.
'Having a 3D printer means we can now do everything in-house and create any form we want,' says Adam.
The pair chose a bio carbon composite material, composed partly of corn starch, for its structural stability, low moisture absorption and thermal properties.
'If we'd done this in timber, it would have been too heavy to manoeuvre,' he says.
On display in Gallery 2 are six 'tower' maquettes representing various iterations of the underlying geometric design.
The models are complemented by sketches, renderings and videos relating to the design process and examples of rye straw, which Arthur imports from specialist producers in Burgundy and hand-dyes in a range of custom hues.
Globally, there are around 25 artisans trained to practise this intricate and exacting craft, and, to his knowledge, Arthur is the only one working in Australia.
A&A were awarded Furniture Design of the Year at the 2022 Dezeen Awards and were finalists in 2020.
A&A also took out Best Collection at the 2020 Créateur Design Awards in New York and won the furniture category at the 2020 Design Files Awards.
Their work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, arts philanthropist Judith Neilson and private collections in Australia and Europe.
Adam Goodrum
Born in Perth, Australian industrial designer Adam Goodrum has worked with global brands including Cappellini, Alessi and Veuve Clicquot. He was awarded the triennial Rigg Design Prize in 2015, the highest accolade for contemporary design in Australia. In 2023 he was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia (DIA) Hall of Fame.
Arthur Seigneur****
Born in Paris, Arthur Seigneur first trained as a cabinet maker and furniture restorer before studying straw marquetry under the guidance of esteemed practitioner Lison de Caunes, granddaughter of Art Deco designer André Groult.
Press release courtesy Tolarno Galleries.
104 Exhibition Street, Level 4
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Australia
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