On Clement Meadmore's mid-century design

Join independent researcher and curator Jeromie Maver and artist/collector Peter Atkins in the Yarra Valley as they discuss the industrial design of Clement Meadmore.

Clement Meadmore is regarded as one of Australia’s most important artists of the twentieth century and is also widely acknowledged as a significant and pioneering figure within the history of Australian modernist design. Maver and Atkins will discuss Meadmore’s singular design language in depth, highlighting his remarkable ability to manipulate the most basic materials such as steel rod, cotton cord, sheet metal, canvas and thin plywood into functional, innovative and durable objects.

Presented as part of Melbourne Design Week 2024, in conjunction with TarraWarra's current exhibition—The Industrial Design of Clement Meadmore: The Harris/Atkins Collection, this is an outstanding opportunity to hear intimate and expert insights into the Harris/Atkins Collection which, carefully built through tremendous dedication and meticulous research over the past 25 years, has played an instrumental part in affirming the importance of Meadmore’s design practice in the history of mid-century modernism.

The talk will conclude with a short Q&A with the audience, followed by refreshments courtesy of our sponsors. Exhibition entry is included in your ticket.

This event is part of Melbourne Design Week 2024, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the NGV.

Sunday 26 May 2024 2pm
$20 (Members $15)

Exhibitions on display:

SUPERsystems: Peter Atkins and Dana Harris
The Industrial Design of Clement Meadmore: The Harris/Atkins Collection
Systems and Structures: A Focus on the TarraWarra Museum of Art Collection

Curated by Anthony Fitzpatrick

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Peter Atkins is a contemporary artist who, along with his partner, sculptor Dana Harris began collecting the work of Clement Meadmore in 1999 after moving to Melbourne from Sydney. Together they have built up an impressive collection, including furniture, lighting, sculpture and ephemera. Atkins contributed the essays 'Clement Meadmore – Influences and Parallels' and 'Michael Hirst – The Variations to the National Gallery of Victoria’s Mid-Century Modern: Australian Furniture Design' exhibition catalogue. The latter helping to instigate Michael Hirst’s inclusion into the Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2017.

Atkins graduated from the National Art School in Sydney in the mid-1980s and has held 48 solo exhibitions in Australia and Internationally. His work is represented in the collections of every Australian State Gallery including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney as well as internationally in the collections of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain and the Chartwell Collection, Waikato Museum of Art & History, New Zealand.

Jeromie Maver is a researcher, collector and curator of Australian mid-century design. He has spent a decade building an archive of print materials, ephemera and interviews relating to this significant period of Australia’s design and manufacturing history. Maver has given public talks and advised on Australian design histories for public institutions including the Powerhouse Museum, NGV, Museum of Sydney, and the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest. In 2016, Jeromie was a recipient of the State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship, where he (along with his partner Dean Keep) conducted research on the Australian artist and designer Clement Meadmore, which culminated in the first ever major survey of Meadmore’s design practice in 2018–19 at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. Jeromie also conducts independent research on émigré designers and cabinetmakers, and his research on Hungarian designer George Korody was published in Hawcroft’s acclaimed book The Other Moderns (2017). In 2023, Maver, along with Professor Alan Pert, Deputy Dean, Melbourne School of Design, curated The Endless Interior, an exhibition focussed on a selection of previously unheralded/unacknowledged mid-century emigre cabinetmakers and creatives of Melbourne at the Glen Eira Gallery.

Maver is a co-founder of the make fund (@the.make.fund), a philanthropic fund that supports Australian design, and along with Dean Keep fundraises for social causes on instagram at @modernistersfor. His most recent exhibition and fundraiser Burke@Bridgford (2023), co-curated with Robyn Oswald-Jacobs, transformed Robin Boyd’s 1953 Bridgford House into a House Museum and event space, which paired the textile designs of Frances Burke against the backdrop of an unaltered Boyd masterpiece to raise funds for the make fund. You can find Jeromie on instagram at @modernistermister

Image credits:

(1) Clement Meadmore, Pendant Light for the T House 1956, Three-legged Dining Table 1955, Three-legged Plywood Chair 1955. Harris/Atkins Collection

(2)The Industrial Design of Clement Meadmore: The Harris/Atkins Collection, installation view, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2024. Photo: James Henry

(3) Photo: Redfish Bluefish