Open Door:
Contemporary Makers and Designers Postscript
Examining the significance of domestic doorways and thresholds, this tightly curated exhibition sparks a broader conversation about design.
As the wheel of good taste turns, various elements of the home are dragged into the spotlight. Kitchens, bathrooms, fireplaces, columns, windows, curtains, tiles, rugs, lamps, roofs and stools have all been seized by designers and reworked and redeveloped and iterated and innovated and fetishized until it becomes a little bit tiring and the next big thing minces over the horizon.
One part of the home that has seemingly evaded this breathless cycle so far is the door, which is curious, given its pivotal role in defining the home as a private space. Open Door: Contemporary Makers and Designers, an exhibition at Craft Victoria curated by Julie Ewington, serves as a criticism of this bit of cultural absentmindedness. Because, after all, the door or entrance has, at various times and in various parts of the world, commanded its share of attention – from the recessed Japanese genkan to the cluster of Ancient Roman deities responsible for the door’s various constituent real and metaphorical parts, including Cardea, the goddess of hinges and handles; Terminus, the god of boundaries; Portunus, the god of keys, and so on.
The exhibition brought together a group of seven designers and artists to consider the door, with a loose brief and a wide range of cultural perspectives producing markedly different results.
Among the objects on show was Melbournebased Thai ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa’s rendition of a pair of Dvarapala – traditional door guardians found across South-East Asia. Traditionally a pair of bold statues guarding Buddhist, Hindu or Jain temples of royal palaces, Srivilasa’s cuddlier versions immediately communicate the idea of the home, and cause one to stop and consider the almost sacred properties of the domestic space.
Other designers and makers, meanwhile, challenged the demarcation of the private home. Mark Edgoose’s 2015 work Domestic Rail is a somewhat sinister Rube Goldberg machine that unfolds in bolts of titanium and steel across the gallery wall, suggesting function while possessing none. Lionel Bawden’s coir fibre doormat, titled Groundwork, (and cheerily printed with the phrase "conceptual entry point") makes a statement about the home being a bit of psychic trickery rather than a natural fact.
The works comprising Open Door neatly make the point that a more beautiful object can be produced by first meditating on its use. The exhibition offered an entree to a new world of design, and also to a number of rather nice door handles.
Open Door: Contemporary Makers and Designers was held 24 August – 5 October 2019 at Craft Victoria. craft.org.au