Featuring - Featuring

 

A concept and show design for 2013 London Design Festival.

 

For the 2013 London Design Festival Featuring - Featuring worked with curator and design historian Mariah Nielson and designer Elliot Hartwell to produce a show with recent Royal College of Art graduates at 18 Hewett Street. ‘GOING INTO BUSINESS’ was and exhibition motivated by entrepreneurial ambition. The works presented in this exhibition respond proactively to the uncertainty in the present design industry. The designer’s included in this exhibition have just emerged from two intensive years of conceptual and material research and development yet the question remains: how and where can we sell our work?

 

The high-end and often inaccessible context of many design galleries, coupled with a struggling economy, presents limited opportunities for emerging designers to advance their material into production. In an attempt to embrace the consumer-led design market, this exhibition challenges the prescribed role and function of a gallery space by transforming 18 Hewett Street into a bustling retail hub. All products presented in the exhibition are for sale and poised for production.

 

Rather than their work being mutually exclusive and sold in either a design gallery or a mass market,

 

GOING INTO BUSINESS’ takes a tactical stance to the display and promotion of design material, and presents a collection of objects that can be sold in both realms. The design work offered is artistic and functional, yet grounded in the realities of the market place. In embracing the contradiction of their products and ambitions, these designers are questioning their place and the providence of their work in relation to the context of contemporary design practice, production and consumption.

 

The Exhibition was complimented by a forum. The forum will included discussions with three distinct London based designers: Sandra Fruebing,Ed Ward and Peter Marigold. What can they tell us about the advantages and pitfalls of making and selling design?