‘Partu’ by Johnny Nargoodah and Trent Jansen
On the occasion of Melbourne Design Week, the two Australian designers are unveiling “Partu”, a collection of objects made out of reused materials.
Johnny Nargoodah is a Nyikina man who has spent much of his life working with leather as a saddler on remote cattle stations, and Trent Jansen is an avant-garde object designer from Thirroul in New South Wales, who regularly experiments with leather and animal pelts in his collectable design work.
They have been collaborating in the design and crafting of collectable furniture since they met in 2016. For that project they worked with fellow Mangkaja artist, Rita Minga to design an armchair that was their interpretation of a local mythical creature called the ‘Jangarra’ (2017) (picture above), now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, as well as the ‘Collision Collection’ (2017), born out of experimentation with leather in combination with old car panels found in the scrub around Fitzroy Crossing.
‘Partu’ (2020) is the Walmajarri word for ‘skin’. This body of work is designed by Trent and Johnny and both designers have their own lens through which to view the processes and inspirations governing these works:
From Trent’s point of view, this project is an experiment in the generation of hybrid material culture. From Johnny’s point of view, the project has a few different aspects to it:
Making - we use rubbish, recycled frames, we make furnitures and use the leather to make it look good, nice and usable;
Recycling - reuse old rubbish we find, and the leather makes it special. Saddlers used repair saddles using leather, making twisted rope out of cowhide. It brings back memories, triggers those old memories of walking around the saddle room in Noonkanbah shed. There is a sensory response, that’s important.
‘Partu’ was developed in Thirroul on the New South Wales Coal Coast. Johnny and Trent came together three times over a period of 18 months, developing new methods for collaboration that could shape their incongruent knowledge, methods and skills in designing and making into co-authored outcomes.
‘Saddle’ (2020) gains its name from the first sketch that Johnny made for this collection, an elongated saddle that led to experiments in stretching supple Scandinavian upholstery leather between geometric timber and steel forms to generate new, complex transitioning forms.
Sketch exchanges over an 18-month period eventually yielded an entire collection built on this beautiful capability of leather to stretch between forms and give shape to the space in-between objects.
‘Ngumu Jangka Warnti’ (2020) is the Walmajarri phrase for ‘whole lot from rubbish’. The design of this collection began with a trip to the local scrap metal yard, in a vague search for anything interesting. Johnny and Trent salvaged a selection of discarded aluminium mesh and used this found metal as the starting point for experimentation. Trent and Johnny designed these pieces as they made them, starting with a mesh substrate cut vaguely in the shape of a chair, and together beat the material with hammers, concrete blocks and tree stumps until it took on a form that they both liked.
This beaten geometry was then softened by laminating New Zealand saddle leather to skin the mesh, masking its geometry and softening its idiosyncratic undulations.
Johnny Nargoodah and Trent Jansen are represented by Sydney’s Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert who are partnering with Arc One Gallery to bring this new body of work to Melbourne Design Week 2020. The creation of this body of work was funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, the National Gallery of Victoria via Melbourne Design Week, UNSW Art & Design, the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries and Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency.
Pictures by Trent Jansen, Romella Pereira, Mario Lyda.
