Out of Hand: School of Art staff and alumni feature in major design exhibition

Louis Pratt, Virus, bronze, 2012

Wednesday 14 September 2016

ANU designer-makers feature in a new international exhibition at the Sydney Museum of Arts and Sciences. Out of Hand focuses on the increasingly important role of digital manufacture in contemporary art, science, design and architecture. It showcases over 90 works from renowned designers including Mark Newson, Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry.

The exhibition also features work from two School of Art staff and two prominent alumni. Mitchell Whitelaw, who recently joined the School to help establish its new Design program, works with digital fabrication to create tangible representations of data. His Measuring Cups and Weather Bracelet translate detailed weather and climate measurements into small hand-held forms, produced using 3d printing. Gilbert Riedelbauch’s aluminium tableware uses a combination of digital milling and hand-forming to produce complex three-dimensional forms from flat sheet materials.

(Left)Mitchell Whitelaw, Measuring Cup (Sydney, 1859-2009)(Right)Gilbert Riedelbauch, Wave 1 gold, aluminium composite sheet and delrin

Out of Hand also features ANU two prominent School of Art alumni. Cinnamon Lee, a graduate of the School’s Gold and Silver workshop, works with 3d modeling and advanced direct manufacturing in tandem with traditional jewellery and metalwork techniques. Louis Pratt, a Sculpture graduate, also works with traditional sculpture techniques such as bronze casting, combined with 3d-scanning, digital modeling and 3d-printing.

Cinnamon Lee, Superstructure, 3d-printed titanium

Out of Hand is a powerful demonstration of the School’s strength in innovative techniques for art and design. The new ANU Design program, which will take in its first students in 2017, plays to this strength, combining the deep material expertise in the School’s workshops with advanced digital techniques to equip the next generation of designers.