VWA’s Melbourne Design Week Highlights
Wanda Gillespie’s ‘The Kinetics of Thought’
VWA Artist in Residence Wanda Gillespie exhibited at Abbotsford Convent for The Kinetics of Thought – displaying Wanda’s finely crafted abacus sculptures and a newly conceived Newton’s Cradle — developed during her residency at the Victorian Woodworkers Association — to examine how we quantify, categorise, and ascribe meaning. Originally a scientific instrument later popularised as an executive toy, Newton’s Cradle is reimagined through a ceremonial and devotional lens, offering a meditation on the unseen ripples of personal and global actions.
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Adam Markowitz x Ruth Allen Studio’s ‘Kindling’
Former Artist in Residence Adam Markowitz collaborated with Ruth Allen to present Kindling for the 100 LIGHTS exhibition at Meat Market – featuring the work of over 110 Australian creatives, studios, architects and practices all exploring lighting as a medium.
Kindling explores the literal and conceptual intersection between hot glass and wood. Wood has been used as a tool to shape glass for centuries — but in Kindling, it becomes a collaborator and provocateur. Through a process-led collaboration on the hot shop floor, Ruth begins by blowing a bubble of glass. At just the right moment, Adam Markowitz inserts a finely crafted timber component. As soon as the wood touches the 1100°C glass, it immediately combusts. The junction of these two elements immediately shape the other. The wood is burnt, charred and scarred, while the glass bubble is deformed and envelops the timber in a molten embrace. Curls of flame leave etched traces on both surfaces, capturing the moment of contact.
What emerges is a singular luminaire: wood and glass in intimate, scorched dialogue. The dry-fit bridle joint — void of adhesives — suspends the glass bubble with quiet tension. Its fragility is counterweighted only by the precision of the mortise and tenon joinery, the only thing preventing collapse. Light from a concealed LED refracts through the warped bubble, casting a dynamic display of light and shadow across the wall behind. More than material experiment, Kindling speaks to the deep cultural role of handcraft. The fusion of the two materials parallels the junction of two people, Ruth
and Adam — individuals, designers, and custodians of craft knowledge. It celebrates hand skills as cultural vessels and conduits of social values defining a physical connection to material, place and another human being. Kindling was presented live at Ruth Allen’s studio for Melbourne Design Week 2025. Fifty observers — artists, industrial designers, and the craft-curious — gathered in the hotshop to witness the making of this landmark collaboration. The audience was guided through the methodology, before Ruth and Adam demonstrated several exploratory processes, live in glass and timber.
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Isabel Avendano Hazbun’s ‘Hatch’
Former Artist in Residence Isabel Avendano Hazbun exhibited Hatch for the 100 LIGHTS exhibition at Meat Market, featuring the work of over 110 Australian creatives, studios, architects and practices all exploring lighting as a medium.
Hatch is part of a larger collection of works titled Industry focused on communicating ideas about sustainability in the design and production of handmade furniture, objects and lighting. It is one in a series of case studies researching knockdown collapsible timber frameworks using dry joinery and rope made from recycled tyre inner tubes. A repurposed discarded fluorescent tube makes the light.
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Alexsandra Pontonio for Knot Pine
Former Artist in Residence Alexsandra Pontonio was commissioned by the Robin Boyd Foundation to design a seated solution for the felled timber supply of the 25-metre-tall heritage-listed Monterey pine that stood before Walsh Street until 2019.
Until early 2020, a Monterey Pine stood before Walsh Street. The tree was already mature when Robin Boyd bought the South Yarra plot in 1957, formerly the sunken rose garden from the newly subdivided ‘Prineyeh’ estate. The tree has been the subject of photographs by Mark Strizic when Walsh Street was first completed and John Gollings when the tree died in 2019. It is well known, from his writings, that the architect and critic was firmly against the post war weeding of Australia’s natural assets in favour of a European image. Boyd’s best seller, The Australian Ugliness, devotes an entire chapter to ‘Pioneers and arboraphobes’ to this lamentation. In designing his family home, Boyd opted to preserve much of the established vegetation including the pine, Southern Blue Gum and Hackberry trees and built heritage remnants, such as the rubble stone retaining wall found on site. When Walsh Street was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2007, Boyd’s decision to site the residence in a way that preserved the
Pinus radiata was recognised, and the tree was specifically identified (“T1”) in the listing.
The pine’s death at 22 metres tall and its felled timber provide a valuable resource and an opportunity for the Robin Boyd Foundation who are now the custodians of the iconic residence to consider its second life. “Knot Pine honours the relationship between the heritage listed tree and the architecture of Walsh Street – it’s a collector’s item”, says Robin Boyd Foundation Chair, Tony Isaacson. Now milled, pine is commonly viewed as a ‘cheap’ or ’ugly’ material unsuitable for fine craftsmanship – to challenge this perception, the Robin Boyd Foundation commissioned furniture maker Alexsandra Pontonio to design Knot Pine, a seated solution for the timber supply. “Pine was embraced as a democratic material throughout the 20th century, modernist approaches that spring to mind include Gerrit Rietveld’s postwar Crate Chair, Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione project, and ofcourse it’s ever presence across many IKEA designs – the beauty of the Monterey Pine timber combined with Alexsandra’s design and craft for Knot Pine flips this narrative on its head – it’s pine, but not as we know it”, says Robin Boyd Foundation Executive Director, Josephine Briginshaw.
Alexsandra Pontonio, said on the collaboration “I had been wanting to work with pine for some time, as I was keen to challenge the conventional understanding of precious materials within the context of fine furniture. I was so excited when I first received this brief, the heritage and history of this tree gave so much depth to this idea.”
Knot Pine is available to purchase as an edition of 20, in hardwax oiled Walsh Street Monterey Pine,to
celebrate 20 years of the Robin Boyd Foundation with funds raised supporting its work. Friend and collaborator of Robin Boyd, Mary Featherston said “The craggy black bark of the Walsh Street Monterey Pine has been familiar to me for sixty years. It is intriguing to now see the beauty of the timber revealed in the Knot Pine chair.”
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Lauren Henderson for Goodbye London Plane
2024 Vic Wood Scholarship recipient Lauren Henderson contributed a bespoke lamp crafted from the reclaimed London Plane timber for the Goodbye London Plane exhibition.
Often maligned, London plane trees release hundreds of thousands of spores over the cooler months, triggering allergic reactions and blanketing city streets. Their roots can be unruly and hazardous with twisted limbs that obstruct powerlines and other infrastructure. After several years of studies, draft masterplans and complaints from residents and visitors alike, most of Melbourne’s London plane trees will be removed under a long-term City of Melbourne Council plan to diversify the city’s tree population. They currently make up 70 per cent of the total tree population in the inner city but in 40 years will make up only 5 per cent.
Lauren’s lamp transforms a piece of Melbourne’s history into a functional object, celebrating the beauty and character of the London Plane. The design came organically after the urge to experiment with washi paper for the first time. It embraces the grain and imperfect but natural shape of the live edge timber that would not usually be used in Lauren’s work.
“This lamp embraces the individuality of the salvaged wood- turning loss into light. This opportunity wouldn’t have been possible without Revival projects, whose commitment to salvaging and repurposing urban trees made this material available.
Special thanks to Andy Ward and Ben Mooney from Ma House supply store for their collaboration and support for myself and the other incredible makers in the show.”
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