Melbourne Design Week (MDW) celebrates design in an annual 11-day program of talks, tours, exhibitions, launches, installations, and workshops across Australia’s design capital.
The program is driven by ideas through providing a platform for designers, educators, enthusiasts, thinkers, and businesses to come together to share these ideas, show and sell new work, and consider how design can be used as a force for good in an increasingly complex and precarious world.
The program is curated into two streams. There is a stream of local and international exhibitions and presentations organised by the National Gallery of Victoria, which includes the Melbourne Art Book Fair and the Melbourne Design Fair. There is also the satellite program of events and exhibitions organised by the design community.
The satellite program makes up approximately 90 per cent of the program with events held at ateliers, studios, retail spaces, universities, galleries, gardens and public spaces throughout Melbourne and regional Victoria. Participation in the satellite program is via an expression-of-interest.
Program highlights at the NGV include:
A keynote talk by Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo, sharing insights into her socially responsive approaches to urbanism. Following the success of her curation of the recent Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Oshinowo will discuss architecture and urbanism in the Middle East, Africa and Asia to rethink approaches to design and architecture that can meet cultural and climatic needs in the twenty-first century.
A public symposium held in anticipation of the upcoming NGV exhibition Reimagining Birrarung: Design Concepts for 2070, which challenges eight leading Australian landscape architects to develop radical speculative designs that reinvent sites along Birrarung (the Yarra River) opening at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia in August 2024.
As part of Melbourne Art Book Fair’s tenth year, UK-based Katy Hessel, esteemed curator, art historian and author of The Story of Art Without Men, presents a talk in partnership with The Wheeler Centre. Melbourne Art Book Fair’s 2024 program includes artist and designer activations, workshops, plus the popular stallholder fair in the NGV’s Great Hall on the opening weekend. The program also presents satellite events along Victoria’s surf coast with programming in Geelong, Barwon Heads, Torquay and Ocean Grove, adding to events in Ballarat and Castlemaine.
A keynote talk from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Senior Curator of Africa and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, Dr Christine Checinska, accompanied by a diverse range of public programs curated by Africa Fashion Program Co-Curator Dorcas Maphakela, will highlight the diverse and varied fashion culture of the African continent in celebration of Africa Fashion. The exhibition, opening at NGV International in May, celebrates the creativity, innovation and indelible global impact of African fashions from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.
Following a recent think tank on Country in Arnhem Land, NGV and Agency Projects present a thought-provoking conversation, Rubbish on the Shore to examine the intersection of culture, creativity and sustainability, investigating design solutions for ocean and river debris affecting communities across Australia.