Hands-on designer has an eye for change
Designer Abi Alice lends her own traditional approach to forward-thinking houseware designs, Rebecca Keillor writes.
Australian-born, London-based artist and designer Abi Alice takes a hands-on approach to her work with Alessi.
In designing her recent Ellipse collection for the Italian housewares and kitchen utensil company — oval-shaped containers made from stainless steel that bend up slightly at the sides — she played around with coloured paper, bending and folding it until the container set took form.
“I always do gravitate to the classic, old-fashioned materials,” says Alice.
“Paper, card, and a hands-on approach, rather than a 3-D printing aspect. I like to see the creative potential of very simple, humble materials and then just seeing what you can create with time and creativity. It’s like a challenge to see what you can achieve with very simple materials. That’s what comes very natural to me.”
For the Dotty wall clock Alice recently designed for Alessi, she says she was inspired by the “creative potential of the coloured sticky dots that are available in every stationary shop.”
“I was drawn to the varying sizes and bright colours of the sticky dots,” she says. “And began a multitude of playful experiments using sticky dots and coloured card. A process which also incorporated my interest in colour, aiming to create vibrant colour combinations.”
Alice’s use of colour is one of the things that sets her work apart, with the Ellipse containers available in powdery turquoise, lemon yellow and stark white.
With Ellipse, Alice says she loves that different colour combinations create different looks, so the collection is versatile and designed to hold any number of things, making them multi-use objects.
“I’m aware people are living in very small spaces, the way the world is changing,” she says. “So I wanted to have objects people could use in a variety of different settings.”
Alice studied fine art in Sydney, and it was as a student she first met Alberto Alessi, Alessi’s president and head of design.
“I was part of a workshop he gave when he visited Australia and I really related to him and the philosophy of Alessi and kept in touch and we started to work together, with the first piece being released 10 years ago,” she says.
Alice says there is a lot of creative talent in Australia and she thinks that the country’s geographic isolation is one of the reasons so many creatives from there have done so well.
“I see it as an advantage that we’re so far away from the rest of the world,” she says. “There’s something about that isolation that allows you to develop your creativity without being intimidated by the wealth of creativity that’s going on everywhere else in the world, although I think, obviously, with the Internet, times have changed.”
The training Alice received in Australia has definitely contributed to her success, particularly in the area of product design, she says.
“There’s a lot of workshop-based practitioners there, so they have the creative idea, but then they also do the making as well and I know that was definitely my approach,” she says.
“I saw projects through from the creative idea to making the samples to preparing for the exhibition or making packaging or the invitation. There’s that followthrough that a lot of Australian artists or designers or practitioners have.”
Alice has work showing in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, is working on another collection for Alessi (to be released early next year if all goes well), and is putting together a couple of collections of her photographic work.
For one so busy and industrious, it’s perhaps no surprise that Alice’s recent Infinity clock for Alessi explores ideas around time: the passing of it and its perpetuity.
“Time is a constant which we have no control over,” she says. “We cannot slow it down and we cannot speed it up, but sadly we live in an era obsessed with time.
“Either there is the frequent comment ‘There is never enough time,’ or we are worried about the effect time has on our aging process. When creating this clock, my intention was to create a tranquil, sculptural form that gave the impression of infinity by creating continuous curves that reflected the constant, infinite quality of time.
“I like to adopt an infinite or timeless philosophy regarding time. I feel we all need to forget the worries about time and just focus on creating una bella vita!”