Dale Hardiman x Adam Lynch
DOWEL JONES
Testament to an era in which individualism plays kick ball with collectivism, Dale Hardiman and Adam Lynch stand as independent design practitioners who serially broker collaborative projects under the banner of Dowel Jones. Founded and named in 2014 after a lamp the duo co-produced as tertiary students of industrial design, Hardiman and Lynch have consistently pushed the commingling of minds and hands to the edge, most recently entreating the anonymous public to participate in an outcome. Their Never Grow Up bench, a benign pink pew now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, invites all who sit on it to scrawl their message on its surface. By framing that which is deemed ‘desecration’ as decoration, Hardiman and Lynch have subverted the subversive and started a wider conversation about what constitutes valuable culture. Reflecting on the solitude of one-man practice, Lynch asks “where’s the fun in succeeding in something by yourself?” His Dowel Jones partner agrees. “There’s no better time than now to think about how to work together,” says Hardiman. “Collaboration and openness are the only way forward; without them we will continue to follow cyclical iterations of the past and veer towards a world of loneliness.”