Our Elmogrand aniline leather features in Partu (the Walmajarri word for skin), the latest collaboration between Johnny Nargoodah and Trent Jansen at Arc One for Melbourne Design Week.
Johnny is a Nyikina man who has spent much of his life working with leather as a saddler on remote cattle stations, and Trent is an avant-garde object designer from Thirroul in New South Wales, who regularly experiments with leather and animal pelts in his collectable design work.
The hybrid pieces are made with materials such as rubbish, recycled frames and finished with leather for aesthetics. Johnny says the leather makes it special, a sensory connection to the history of Fitzroy Crossing and station life. The smell of leather brings back old memories of walking around the saddle room in Noonkanbah shed.
‘Saddle’ (2020) gains its name from the first sketch that Johnny made for this collection, an elongated saddle that led to experiments in stretching Elmogrand, a supple Scandinavian upholstery leather between geometric timber and steel forms to generate new, complex transitioning forms.
12 March – 11 April 2020
Melbourne Design Week
Arc One Gallery
45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Supporters
This project is assisted by the Australian government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body..
This event is part of an initiative of the Victorian government in collaboration with NGV Melbourne.
Trent Jansen and Johnny Nargoodah are represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney.
Johnny Nargoodah is represented by Mangkaja Arts in Fitzroy Crossing, WA.
