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Exhibitions Dinosaur Designs Contemporary Australian Craft One of Australia’s young design success stories are the prolific trio who call themselves Dinosaur Designs. Louise Olsen, Stephen Ormandy and Liane Rossler met at art school in the early 1980s and started off by selling their handmade wares at Paddington Markets in Sydney. Since they formed Dinosaur Designs the three have developed a distinct individual style and experimented with innovative materials and forms to produce a unique product that is now recognised internationally as well as across Australia. Interestingly the practice of hand forming their pieces remains central to the production of Dinosaur Designs jewellery and table ware, and is what gives the work its recognisable organic form. This is one of those rich practices where craft, design, art and fashion intersect in the construction of objects that are tactile, seductive and fun.
Brian Parkes from Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design in Sydney curated a survey exhibition of Dinosaur Designs work in 2002 celebrating their twenty years in business. The show featured an engaging collection of home wares and jewellery ranging in colour from bright primary blues and reds to tertiary hues evocative of the Australian landscape. The exhibition was a great opportunity for Australians to see whole series of objects operating as still life installations in a gallery environment, where previously they may have encountered only single pieces worn or used in a domestic context.
After the successful Australian national tour an alternative version of Dinosaur Designs was presented at Spiral Gallery in Tokyo as part of the Ancient Future - Australian Arts Festival Japan 2003. Following this initial excursion overseas Object has joined forces with Asialink to take Dinosaur Designs to Bangkok, Taipei, Singapore in 2004-5 |
