Gallery:   Inhabit – Living in design

From its inception as a designed city, Canberra has been a design laboratory, always new, always in the present. Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre continues this tradition by curating an exhibition with objects drawn from Australian craft practitioners and designer makers that reveal how the objects that inhabit our homes shape the spaces we live in. The exhibition is presented as part of the Designing a Capital: Crafting a Nation program.

Belconnen Arts Centre: Off the Square

In association with the Designing a Capital: Crafting a Nation program, Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre presents Off the square curated by Peter Haynes. The exhibition showcases works by the Centre's membership of craft practitioners and designer makers, highlighting diverse media, techniques and approaches to design.

Off-site exhibition at Canberra Museum and Gallery

Re-forestation: how to make a tree from a chair – Ashley Eriksmoen

Ashley Eriksmoen is an internationally recognised furniture maker, who through her practice strives to find ways to connect people to their personal spaces. She describes her practice as domesticating wood into objects; taking wood from its wild, natural state to one that will behave indoors without losing its living spirit. The exhibition is part of the Designing a Capital: Crafting a Nation program, and highlights Eriksmoen's playful approach to her practice, gathering together discarded furniture, redesigned into a forest. The exhibition's serious side calls into the fore the issue of deforestation, and asks what would happen when we have no forests but only landfill to source wood.

Gallery:   Embracing Innovation Volume 3

The development of Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) has seen changes take place within the Creative Arts in Australian tertiary institutions. Primary practice-based and practice-led research has been incorporated into universities research recognition and funding frameworks. Concurrently, craft practitioners and designer makers are embracing digital technologies, research and design thinking, with innovation and advances in these areas changing the way they engage, design and create.

In response, Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre presents, Embracing Innovation Volume 3, an exhibition showcasing innovation in the creative arts, with a particular focus on craft and design. The exhibition showcases makers who are exploring these new areas of practice.

Gallery:   The Side Project – Cesar Cueca and Karl Firla

The Side Project is a collaboration between internationally renowned Australian designer Cesar Cueva and Sydney based chef Karl Firla. The exhibition draws on the culinary movement of molecular gastronomy and presents new work exploring the relationship between this movement and object design. The Side Project will include an interactive dinner created by chef Karl Firla and an exhibition of new work by Cueva.

Cueva states, "Researching the molecular gastronomy culinary movement, I became aware there has been very little investigation into object design that responds to this departure from conventional cookery." Cueva has developed the exhibition rationale based on this growing dining culture, creating an entirely visual and tactile experience from furniture, lighting and objects for the table, complimented with serving and eating implements.

Crucible showcase:   Marianna del Casillo

Marianna del Casillo's intriguing jewellery creations have aesthetic links to her Ecuadorian heritage. The materials she uses in her practice are found, or discarded objects that invoke a forgotten story or untold narrative. She says that her practice is about 'creating increased detail and innovation with recycling at its core.' The exhibition brings together a collection of unusual, wearable objects that will captivate the imagination.

Gallery:   Paradox in a paddock – Elizabeth Paterson

Spaciousness is a defining characteristic of Canberra and the legacy of Walter Burley Griffin's design, which created not a city surrounded by paddocks, but incorporated the paddocks into the city. Elizabeth Paterson creates a cardboard and papier-mâché installation that investigates the notion of designed cities through the prism of 'the paddock in the city' and how successive generations have tussled with this design challenge. Paradox in a paddock questions how do we reconcile our open spaces with the population density and activity of a city.

Gallery:   The Very Sad Fish-lady – Joy McDonald

An exhibition and a puppet performance of the migration tale of the Fish-lady, created by artist Joy McDonald. The humorous and quirky tale is a fantasy story based on the artist's family and their migration from Greece from an island called Castellorizo (also known as 'the rock') to Canberra. It tells of an aged woman resembling a fish, who is re-united with her family and who bring her to Australia. The story is a symbolic representation and interpretation of 'the rock' and the customs of its people. The tale will be told through an exhibition at the Centre of the puppets, models and storyboards created in the making process, and a puppetry performance at the Street Theatre.

Gallery:   Cathy Franzi

Cathy Franzi's ceramic practice is devoted to the exploration of Australian flora. Franzi has developed a distinctive sgraffito linocut style of carving the clay surface to represent her interpretation of Australian flora and investigation of the impact of environmental degradation. She creates a series of works, inspired by Walter Burley Griffin's and Marian Mahony's vision to 'paint' the hills of Canberra in a single colour of vegetation assemblages as a process of re- vegetation. A vision that was never realised, with the only physical evidence remaining being a few Crimson Bottlebrush and Rosemary Grevillea on Red Hill from initial plantings.

Gallery:   Art Quilt Australia: people, place and nation

Art Quilt Australia: people, place and nation is an initiative of the Ozquilt Network Inc. and curated by Valerie Kirk, Head of Textiles, The Australian National University. Selected works make up this survey exhibition of quilt textiles, drawing on the finest contemporary Australian art quilters. The works showcase the talents of both new and established Australian art quilters, presenting innovative and imaginative works across a range of techniques, materials and formats.