Creative People

Photographer and performer Sarah Collins is no stranger to the Family pages of The Design Files, although this is her first time on the other side of the camera! Sarah photographed all our ‘Family’ stories until January 2020, when she became pregnant with her second daughter.

Since then, Sarah, her husband, actor and TV writer Justin Kennedy, their eldest Polly (6) and baby Daisy (1) have been riding out the pandemic from their home in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges.

As creatives working predominantly in the entertainment industry, Sarah and Justin have come up against some pretty scary times over the past two years. Not only have they seen their own work dry up significantly, but they’ve also witnessed their creative community of actors, writers, directors and production crew struggle to get by, in some cases choosing to re-skill and leave the industry altogether.

We spoke with Sarah about the state of the arts, and her hopes for the future.

Amanda Hayman and Troy Casey first met in a professional capacity in 2017, and…

Melbourne-based ceramicist Claudia Lau has spent years developing her practice. It was around four years ago that we featured the young ceramicist’s work for the first time, when she was still a student, and working as a studio assistant for Leah Jackson. Even in those early days  Claudia was creating incredibly refined yet distinctive handmade ceramic pieces, which at the time were stocked by the likes of Shifting Worlds and Modern Times in Melbourne.

Recently, Claudia has turned her focus from exploration of clay to glazes, undertaking a material chemistry course to further understand the process, and continuing her studies at Melbourne’s renowned SoCA (School of Clay and Art). The result of this research and experimentation is a new direction for her practice: House Editions.

From her home base in Melbourne, Claudia liaises with a small team in the Jingdezhen province of China to realise fine porcelain homewares and crockery in a plethora of coloured, textured finishes.

For Sarah Annand, textiles are the medium that fuses all her creative loves together. Her brand Oat Studio is a way for the designer to unite photography, painting and architecture in fabric design.

Sarah’s textile designs are a culmination of decade of experience in the local fabric industry, a degree in art history and her love for Canberra’s modernist architecture. An unexpected trifecta!

The best thing about The Design Files + Laminex Design Awards is that it recognises the detailed and intricate as much as the grand and fantastical. Both skill sets are equally impressive, and equally difficult to master!

The following artisans are specialists in their fields, from glassblowers and porcelain artists to jewellers and weavers. The shortlisted entries of the Handcrafted category in our 2021 Awards are 16 makers that definitely deserve the limelight.

Behind an innocuous shopfront on Johnston Street, Collingwood, artist Camille Laddawan threads coloured glass beads methodically along a wooden loom, to create small patterned tapestries. She’s 18 months into this precise and rhythmic practice, spending her days considering colour, pattern and even her own alphabet in the designs for new pieces.

Camille’s current body of work, her first one, is dedicated to her family. By collecting personal documents spanning three generations from as far and wide as Perth, Thailand, Vietnam, Iran, Nepal, Greece, London and Melbourne, she has enshrined messages and fragments of letters into her colourful beaded artworks.

See inside her beautiful, composed world below (which you might recognise from our feature a few years ago).

In case it wasn’t obvious, at The Design Files we love architecture, ceramics and studio visits. This story weaves all three into one!

Ceramicist Kati Watson engaged SAHA to design the smallest studio possible at the bottom of her garden. She has lived in the same Bronte house for the last 30 years, and wanted a space that would respect the landscape. A dream creative collaboration!

The result is this beautiful, semi-open studio shelter where Kati can sit and pot with the terrain in full view. The dream!

Georgia Perry makes things that trace people back to joy: a checkers umbrella, a…

Ever since she was a young girl, Corina Muir can always remember being into…

When Kane Lehanneur was a teenager, he and his brother used to paint business signs at the local pubs and cafes around Manly. It’s only in the past few years that he’s begun to pursue his art-making seriously.

Forever taking nature as his subject, Kane’s latest body of work How Soon is Now reflects his aggravation at the frustrating government inaction on climate change. It’s a move into a much more abstract, expressive style than his previously figurative works – and comes with a greater sense of urgency.