Share How people live, work, travel, consume and communicate have changed in extraordinary ways since 1900. Designed objects help us understand these changes and prompt us to ask questions about the past, present and future.
A robot as my colleague?
The first decades of the 20th century saw vast changes in how goods were manufactured. The introduction of the first moving assembly line at Ford Motors in 1913 dramatically altered the way things were made. Mechanised production had a direct impact on workers, with more repetitive work on the one hand and incentives like higher wages and the first paid holidays on the other. How things were designed also shifted. Simpler shapes and fewer decorative features made manufacturing more efficient, as is the case with the
By Elisha Buttler and Michele Stockley
People have been talking about the relationship between art and change for a long time. Art as an agitator for change, a messenger for change; art as an act of activism or assertion. These days, this relationship may feel like a natural one; however, this hasn’t always been the case, with many of the artistic practices and theoretical concepts linking art and change having shifted over time but especially within the last two decades. Dr Geoff Hogg, Adjunct Professor in the School of Art at RMIT, notes:
The last twenty years have seen a growth in socially engaged art as an accepted field of creative practice. Today this feels normal, and it is becoming harder to remember that for much of the twentieth century this was highly controversial. The concept of ‘art for art’s sake’ was a nineteenth-century philosophy that extolled the intrinsic value of art independent of political, moral or educational purposes. In the tw
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A mirror-cum-observatory and a lockdown lounge chair with an integrated bar feature in an exhibition at New York s Friedman Benda gallery that explores the value of design objects beyond just their practical use.
The show, titled Split Personality, was curated by Alice Stori Liechtenstein and features furniture and homewares from 17 different designers.
Each piece was chosen because it has a symbolic value beyond what meets the eye, exploring topics from immigration to biodiversity loss through different materials and production methods.
Top image: Split Personality is on view at Friedman Benda until 6 February. Above: Toomas Toomepuu contributed to the show
The exhibition focuses on the stories the objects have to tell, Liechtenstein told Dezeen, using chairs as an example.