Seeing and Knowing New Perspectives in Furniture Exhibition Catalogue

Seeing and Knowing:
New Perspectives in Furniture
Bryn Davies | Brandon Harrison | Jess
Humpston | Daniel Little | Georgia Szymanski

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Cover Image: Daniel Little | ARBR Chair. 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Seeing and Knowing:
New Perspectives in Furniture
Bryn Davies | Brandon Harrison | Jess
Humpston | Daniel Little | Georgia Szymanski
16 February - 16 March 2024
Craft + Design Canberra

Image: Bryn Davies | Solace 1, 2023 | Daniel Mulheran

Image: Jess Humpston | Calefaction, 2023 | Photo: Franky Walker

Image: Brandon Harrison | Minilith, 2023 | Photo: Allena Tran

Seeing and Knowing:
New Perspectives in Furniture
Exhibition Statement
Seeing and Knowing: New Perspectives in
Furniture is a group exhibition featuring the
work of Bryn Davies, Brandon Harrison, Jess
Humpston, Daniel Little and Georgia
Szymanski.
Furniture holds an interesting dichotomy within
our everyday lives: it is a phenomenon that
spans the artistic and the functional, from
complex to minimalist. Like all craft it has been
deeply affected by changes in culture, trends,
and technology.
How we see a piece of furniture is guided by
many preconceptions and enculturated
assumptions about where they fit in our world.
Mass consumption, ease of production, and
ubiquity are just some of many modern forces
that change how we live with our objects and
skew their value. Modern consumerism has
altered our connection to the materials, the
process and the inspiration behind much artistry
and craft. These forces constitute the ‘knowing’
that we bring to our ‘seeing’ of objects.
The purpose of this group exhibition is to
encourage the viewer to explore different ways
of seeing, to bring curiosity to the mundane and
to challenge the familiarity, preconceptions and
‘knowing’ that influence our view of objects, in
this case furniture. This exhibition hopes to be a
celebration of the human aspect in making, the
beauty of everyday things, to shed light on the
familiar and allow the viewer to explore, touch
and experience furniture, its material, and its
process from a different perspective.

Image: Daniel Little | ARBR Chair, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Image: Bryn Davies | Solace 1, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Bryn Davies
ARTIST STATEMENT
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Solace 1 and Solace 2 conceptually are two side
tables that can be adapted into any household
room. Both tables are explorations of space and
light, originally inspired by Japanese modernist
cabinet design and architectural forms. The side
tables present simple and refined spaces formed
through the structural slats of Silver Ash that are
a strong contrast to the darker tones of the
Tasmanian Black Wood and Eastern Red Cedar.
The name 'Solace' came from the time spent on
these works throughout the year. The creative
journey that this project took me on allowed me
to find ‘Solace’ in the physical and mental
attention to both the design and construction of
the pieces.
Originating from Sydney's south coast, Bryn
Davies studied a Bachelor and Honors degree at
the ANU School of Art and Design in screen
printing. During this time he found a love for
furniture and design through the school's design
department and various local inspirations.
Shortly after graduating Bryn began working
with wood, and was mentored by master sculptor
and designer Tom Mac' Mahan.
Bryn completed a Cert IV in Fine Furniture at
the Sturt School for Wood in 2021.
He is now a country based Artist/Designer-
Maker. Bryn's practice predominantly focuses on
modernist styles and influences from Japanese,
cubist and rectilinear forms and designs.

Image: Bryn Davies | Solace 1, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Image: Bryn Davies | Solace 1, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Image: Brandon Harrison | Minilith, 2023 | Photo: Allena Tran

Brandon Harrison
ARTIST STATEMENT
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
How does one interact with their environment?
Furniture is comforting and familiar. There is
memory there, and yet each memory is different.
My interests involve the intimate relationship
that humans build with the world around them,
from public space to products. By playing with
this experience through texture, balance,
structure and movement, I aim to create
furniture that becomes an intimate partner in
the life of the user.
The forms my work takes are visually
minimalist, however, intricately crafted to focus
purely on the end use and the relationship it has
with it’s human counterpart.
Furniture for the humans.
Brandon Harrison is a furniture designer and
maker based in Naarm/Melbourne.
Interested in human-centered design at a macro
level, he worked as a Town Planner before
moving to a more intimate, human scale that
furniture is able to respond to. He studied fine
woodwork and furniture design at Sturt Craft
centre in the NSW Southern Highlands and
currently holds a residency at the Victorian
Woodworkers Association.
His practice is focused on structure, movement
and the interaction between people and their
furniture that works to humanise an often
abstract and cerebral design manifesto. Within a
framework of timber he is able to tap into the
cultural memory of a familiar natural material.
Brandon was the winner of Wood Review’s 2022
student Maker of the Year, has been included as
a finalist in the 2023 VIVID design award, the
2023 Carence Prize for furniture design and the
2021 Craft + Design Canberra’s Emerging
Contemporaries exhibition.

Image: Brandon Harrison | SLYD, 2023 | Photo: Allena Tran

Image: Brandon Harrison | SLYD, 2023 | Photo: Allena Tran

Image: Daniel Little | ARBR Chair, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Daniel Little
ARTIST STATEMENT
In my practice I strive to explore and celebrate
the interplay of design, craftsmanship and
materiality. I endeavor to create pieces that
inspire a deeper appreciation of the beauty in our
everyday objects. My goal is to create objects that
can be lived with, repaired, and discovered anew.
My current body of work explores texture,
lightness, and the endless possibilities of
exploration. These Objects are created to stand in
opposition to the more ubiquitous products of
mass manufacture. The genesis of my recent
pieces emerged through a process of iterative and
creative play. Notably, the sculptural essence of
the ARBR chair evolved from the intuitive
carving of prototypes.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Daniel J Little, a Sydney-based designer maker,
began his journey into furniture and ceramic
design at Sturt Mittagong, where he served as a
Studio Assistant at Sturt ceramics department.
He went on to study Furniture design at Sturt
School for Wood where he graduated in 2021. On
graduation he took up a teaching position at
Heartwood creative and is currently a furniture
resident at Sturt Galleries. Daniel has sold works
at galleries in multiple states in Australia and
was the category winner of the Australian Wood
review maker of the year in cabinets in 2022. His
practice explores the endless potential for new
forms and ideas that challenge the ubiquity of
mass manufactured objects.
The ARBR chair is built with local Queensland
silver ash, an intentional decision made to
highlight a beautiful and underused local
material. The focal point of interest in the piece
is a point of space created by the curved interplay
of three molded components. Each of these three
pieces consists of 10 ash strips that were glued in
purpose built formas to become matching pairs.
They are shaped to appear almost like they are
growing together, Thus the name ‘ARBR’ a play
on the word ‘Arbor’ a shelter or growth of vines. I
am inspired by the interplay of light and shadow
and endeavor to explore the romance and
fragility of this in my piece. This design was an
experiment to push the material and create a
piece that imbued both a sculptural quality but
remained warm and functional.

Image: Daniel Little | ARBR Chair, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Image: Daniel Little | ARBR Chair, 2023 | Photo: Daniel Mulheran

Image: Jess Humpston | Calefaction, 2023 | Photo: Franky Walker

Jess Humpston
ARTIST STATEMENT
Working predominantly in timber, my work
balances traditional woodworking with
architectural character, contrasting clean lines
with the tactility of the hand-made. A
background in both fashion and interior design
has helped tune my understanding of the space a
piece of furniture inhabits and the intimate
physical interaction between user and object. At
both macro and micro scale, connection between
user and furniture is always considered with the
aim to elevate everyday functional requirements
with an element of the unexpected. My work is
minimal, yet detail focussed and my practice is
dedicated to material exploration within highly
rational and brief-driven parameters.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
AJess Humpston is an emerging designer-maker
based in Naarm/Melbourne working
predominantly in timber. A recent graduate of
the Sturt School for Wood, Jess also holds an
Honours degree in Interior Architecture at
Curtin University and an Advanced Diploma in
Fashion and Textiles from the WA Institute of
Fashion and Textiles. Jess is currently an artist in
residence at the Victorian Woodworkers
Association where she tutors part time whilst
balancing a career in Interior Design. A finalist in
last year's Clarence Art Prize, Jess has been
involved in exhibitions including Design Fringe
and Craft Victoria where she was a participating
designer in The Chair exhibition. Jess has
contributed to the Australian Wood Review as a
judge and writer in addition to winning AWR
Maker of the Year in 2022.

Image: Jess Humpston | Margin, 2023 | Photo: Greg Piper

Image: Jess Humpston | Margin, 2023 | Photo: Greg Piper

Image: Claudia Vogel | Adapt A Bench, 2023 | Photo: Lefika Images
Image: Georgia Szymanski | Curved Drawers, 2022 | Photo: Issy Connelley

Georgia Szymanski
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a multi-disciplinary designer maker based
in Naarm (Melbourne). I work primarily with
wood to create functional pieces, blurring the
lines between furniture, object and sculpture.
My practice investigates intimacy within
personal and collective spaces through a variety
of scale and material matter. I am intent on
practicing my craft as a way of re-evaluating the
beauty of commonplace objects and their role in
our sense of place.
Made to Measure tabletop uses offcuts from a
previous project and legs that I developed and
created at Sturt School for Wood in 2022. The
legs are formed using a sliding partner jig with 12
laminations steam bent and glued in the jig. The
steam bent process was my first experience at
bending and re-producing multiples. I worked
with a metal fabricator Old Four Legs to create
the prototype Weight of Some Thing. Working
with a fabricator on a piece of furniture was
another first experience. The development of my
furniture craft hinges on incorporating new
materials, techniques and ways of production.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Georgia completed a Bachelor of Interior Design
(Honours) at RMIT in 2018, a Certificate II in
Cabinet and Furniture Making at Box Hill
Institute in 2020 and graduated from Sturt
School for Wood with a Certificate IV in Fine
Furniture Making in 2022. Georgia currently
teaches an open course at the Melbourne Guild
of Fine Woodworking and facilitates furniture
making with people with disabilities at
Connecting to Australia in Brunswick,
Melbourne. Georgia is currently curating and
presenting an exhibition with Jess Humpston
for Melbourne Design Week 2024.
Georgia has recently exhibited at the Melbourne
Design Fringe 2023 Speculation: Eight Billion
Little Utopias. She exhibited as part of the Ceres
Fair Wood exhibition for Melbourne Design
Week 2023 and with Vivid Emerging Designer
Awards. Georgia was jointly granted the
Furniture Design Award and Authentic Design
Alliance Award of Merit in 2022 by the Latitude
Group Vivid Emerging Designer Awards.

Image: Georgia Szymanski | Curved Drawers, 2022 | Photo: Issy Connelley

Image: Georgia Szymanski | Weight of Some Thing, 2024 | Photo: Issy Connelley