Identity Parade

2013's Designers in Residence were invited by the Museum to respond to the theme of Identity, to explore how design can be used to convey, create or reflect a sense of identity through an object or experience.

Glued to his laptop, locked in his flat, emailing, DM’ing, posting, stressing and Skyping, what sort of a collection could a characterful designer produce in 3 months?

This project explores the potential of now ubiquitous rapid fabrication techniques to free designers from
commercial exigencies, and to instead prodigiously create any number of objects whose delineations are guided by and embody intensely personal narratives. The role of collector and designer collapse into one.

Through a blog (please click through to the blog about page for more info) I created a character, a fictional tool, who existed for three months in a fever of rumination and production. Each post was a lived scenario which brought together a wider issue such as generalised anxiety or facebook envy, with a fabrication technique such as 3d printed ceramic, plaster, sintered nylon or slip-cast porcelain. The character fused these into a dizzying array of designs, each contributing to a collection which tells the story of a search for identity told through the design of objects. A journey which, thanks to technology, any one of us could embark upon in the oh-so-near future.

To conclude I terminated the character, and the tripartite display of his project consists of a table on which all the various objects are collected, a miniature museum of the said designer, as well as the blog through which the stories behind each of the objects is relayed, and a film which compresses and conveys in a non-didactic manner, all the various influences and themes embedded in the overall project.

See below for the film that goes with the collection of objects:

See below for a taster film made by Alice Masters for the Design Museum:

And the film below is the initial proposal with which I was awarded the Residency:

A video of me presenting a summary, a postscript of the project, in 25 slides...

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Image above and two below: a selection of pieces from Identity Parade were on show between May and June of 2014 at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden, London.

Photo by Gareth Gardner

Photo by Sophie Mutevelian

Two designs from Identity Parade (image above and two below) made again here in Porcelain (on the left and centre), as well as a new glazed earthenware piece on the right called Scrollascraper, were exhibited at Platform on the King's Road, London, as part of the show "Space Craft", a collaboration between the Crafts Council UK and Habitat. I was (extremely) proud to be exhibited alongside Edmund de Waal, 6a Architects, and Studio Weave amongst others. The show toured the country for 18 months following its launch at Platform.

Photo by Sophie Mutevelian