Zuii, Henry's collar, (fruit holder) 2005
Compressed fibre
Limited edition (Alessi design museum collection)

The idea to stage the annual exhibition known as Fringe Furniture came to Bruce Filley, twenty years ago. Formerly a furniture maker and now an established Public Art Project Manager, the thought came to him while he "was in (his) shed making furniture that would never be seen outside my own lounge room. The radio was tuned to 3RRR and someone was talking about the Fringe Festival when WOW! What an idea! ... and before I could catch my breath, 3RRR had put me in direct radio communication with sheds across Melbourne and I was telling lonely furniture designer/makers within them how we could change Australia's balance of payments by showing the world what wild and provocative furniture we made."¹ So the 'spontaneous construction'² of Fringe Furniture began. View images

Fringe Furniture has since been an annual component of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, held every year for three weeks from late September to mid October. As one of the first craft and design exhibitions forming part of a festival which celebrates emerging art and performance, Fringe Furniture consistently presents works where ideas come first but function, usually second, or third, or, occasionally, not at all. As Bruce wrote in the 1996 Melbourne Fringe Furniture 10 Catalogue: "Actually, the furniture in Fringe 1 was pretty ordinary, but the act of assembling and exhibiting it captured people's imagination and for better or worse, it encouraged any number of people 'to have a go' at furniture." ³ It was also one of the first free annual craft and design exhibitions that could be relied on for a combination of quirky exhibits, a free beer, and a chance to catch up with friends, artists and arts industry from all over Melbourne. By the mid 90's it was definitely an art event where you saw everyone converge on the Fitzroy Town Hall, milling around contemporary furniture.

The essay FF ⁴by Alex Selenitsch also in the 1996 Catalogue, provided a delightful conceptual context to the essence of the exhibition's qualities and Melbourne Fringe overall. "FRINGE - the word refers to a kind of edge, which in turn assumes a centre or a body. Note it doesn't mean OUTCAST. Rather than ALTERNATIVE, the Fringe defines the outer limits of, say a rug or city. But note, again, it is not just a boundary. The Fringe is a conversation between the cambium layer and the true wood, which, as any Fringer knows, is a conversation between the living edge and the dead centre. Fringe Furniture looks to conventional notions of furniture to enable its 'fringeness' to be attached. The best of these attachments makes us laugh, feel irritated or disgusted at the deep-seated, rather conventional nature of ordinary furniture, and here is a clue to one of the most common fringe tactics for furniture; something plus something else equals something completely different. Sometimes forms are added to each other, sometimes ideas; sometimes ideas and forms are mixed." ⁵

Since 2003 Fringe Furniture has been held at the Melbourne Museum, unashamedly showcasing the works of bold new designers amongst other works that shun or overlook a contemporary design aesthetic. "Eclecticism, which is the presence of different aesthetic systems in the one work of art, often emerges in fringe work in industrial strength." ⁶ Eclecticism can also be observed in a collection of works of art. In more recent years it has been themed, allowing for some creative direction, although, most makers enter whatever they're producing that year. That's open access. It allows for the democracy of eclecticism. The 2007 Fringe Furniture theme, Material/ism, a fairly obvious play on words that seeks to allow all that "matters" in furniture and this year focuses more broadly into furnishings. The works in this year's show will embody a diversity of materials, ideas, form, function and potentially, the desire to acquire. Ultimately, what materializes will be an abundance of diverse creativity, from not just Melbourne, but from practitioners, nationwide.

Designing Now - Fringe Furniture Alumni by comparison, is a curated exhibition as part of Furnitex 07, aiming to exemplify the current ideas and forms of previous entrants, mainly award winners, from the past 25 years of Fringe Furniture. Participants include Bruce Filley, Alex Selenitsch, Marc Pascal, Gordon Tait, Lana Alsamir Diamond, and Daniel Barbera of Barbera Design, Alana Di Giacomo and Marcel Siegel of Zuii, Sandy Imeson, Ism Objects, Guy Parmenter, MAP, Elizabeth Lawrence of Flaunt Design and others. The artists selected are now proven or emerging creative's in a successful artistic practice or design business. Things have changed since Fringe Furniture began and Melbourne now has an established design focus, an identity and still, a slight argument. "Craft is a hand job" (many thanks Susan Cohn), but design is not necessarily just a desk job in comparison. Crafted or designed, making furnishings is ultimately an artistic career, where ideas keep the maker driven towards an object as outcome, with production money being the third party in most cases. Successful designer-makers strive to exist in a productive 'menage-a-trois' of all three. Perhaps Designing Now - Fringe Furniture Alumni will help put this idea to bed.

The "fringiness" may have lapsed in the works of some of these Designing Now practitioners ... or perhaps it has become more a crafted humour, combined with an ongoing urge and determination to live by their own design. Once upon-a-time it could be stated that "... although Fringe Furniture must be crafted or made (or proposed as such - its strangeness must be embodied so that it can enter the realm of furniture) it is not about skill in the sense of virtuoso working of materials ..."⁷ Actually now it is, but it's not just about the material, because the makers' livelihood depends on ingenuity, innovation of design techniques, use of technologies, a focus on the issue of sustainability, style, comfort, aesthetics and the expectation that their work can be produced, in multiples, bespoke or otherwise. Virtuosos they may no longer be, but most are all now focused on the material, in all varieties of the meaning of the word. Designing Now - Fringe Furniture Alumni evolves and, judging by its variety, there will be an essence of the Melbourne Fringe quirkiness holding within it both humour and whimsy as part of its own 'true wood'.⁸ None of this mixing and matching effects the function of the furniture. The lamps still light, the chairs support, the cupboards contain. However, there is a tendency to destabilise, through humour and irony, furniture's abominable smugness."⁹

Furnitex 07 provides an opportunity for these practitioners to display their ideas and engage through skills and humour to capture the attention of manufacturers, industry networks, retailers and the general public, allowing this unique business opportunity to expand their own fringe benefits. Melbourne Fringe has been generously sponsored by Australian Exhibitions and Conferences with a strategically placed exhibition stand of 50 square metres at the entrance of the fair, and in addition some works will be on display in the Melbourne Exhibition Centre foyer as a link to the exhibition inside the event. What has evolved is a direct collaboration between an organization that supports emerging artistic expression (Melbourne Fringe) by a company that fosters the business development of creativity and manufacture through a variety of established industry based trade fairs (Australian Exhibitions and Conferences).Designing Now Fringe Furniture Alumni will premiere at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre as a separate showcase to the annual Vivid design competition, aiming to further enhance the Furnitex focus on emerging design trends and products, and showcase the diversity of contemporary creativity.

In some respects Designing Now is homage to Bruce Filley's initial footsteps into trade. Beyond producing Fringe Furniture he became the Manager of Artists + Industry pursuing export opportunities for furniture makers. This exhibition will bring an injection of irreverent creativity into the Furnitex trade fair and by doing so, allows some of these makers to exhibit in a trade orientated environment for the first time. For the more established it will see them placed once again in a Fringe context. It will allow all these makers who are designing now, to create as alumni can, a focus on Fringe Furniture's material history, as well as on its successful open-access policy as the launching pad or an "... incubator for raw creative talent"¹⁰ in Melbourne.

Marisia Lukaszewski
June, 2007

If you are in Melbourne for the 19 - 22 July please come and visit Designing Now - Fringe Furniture Alumni at stand J2, but please pre-register first. Furnitex is free to the public on Sunday 1 - 5pm July 22.

Visit the Melbourne Finge website to download a registration form for entry into this year's Fringe Furniture Exhibition.

Marisia Lukaszewski is a curator and exhibition producer and has been the Fringe Furniture Producer for Melbourne Fringe since 2005.

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