Conscious Craft 2025: Tackling the Sustainability Crisis Through Material Ingenuity

Craft Victoria has announced two exhibitions as part of Conscious Craft 2025, headlined by eight artists confronting urgent environmental issues – from plastic pollution to resource depletion and textile waste – with groundbreaking creative solutions.

The exhibitions Future Ambition and By/Product illustrate the artists’ specialised knowledge and their endless capacity to creatively solve problems through material innovation. The outcomes of their work have viable commercial applications and the potential to influence industry practices on a larger scale.

The exhibitions are part of Conscious Craft, a movement conceived by Craft to redefine our relationship with materials and forge a path towards a more sustainable future. The movement highlights Australian artists who are leading the charge, and supports the research and development of consciously made art, craft and design. As a movement, Conscious Craft invites community and industry to participate and invest collectively in a better future. The exhibitions will open at Craft’s Melbourne gallery this May.

Launched in 2022, Conscious Craft builds on this vision by promoting a more considered, responsive and responsible approach to materials. Standing at the intersection of tradition and innovation, it seeks to pave a transformative path toward a more sustainable future. The initiative invests in Craft’s creative programming and artist fees for creatives to undertake research and development. It promotes works that are sustainably made as a testament to ethical production and circular design processes.

Conscious Craft features an annual exhibition program delivered by Craft, highlighting artists seeking innovative solutions to sustainability issues in the production of art, craft and design.

With a bold mission of being an influential platform for a circular material ecosystem, Conscious Craft aims to foster collaborations between artists and industries, building capacity to support artists in material research and circular design.

Craft Victoria invites industry leaders and the Australian community to be part of the development of the Conscious Craft initiative and help make a more considered, responsible and responsive future.

Exhibitions

Future Ambition

9 May – 21 June

Artists: Isabel Avendaño Hazbún, DNJ Paper, Other Matter (Jessie French), Pit Projects (Anni Hagberg and Michael Gittings), Shahn Stewart

Anni Hagberg and Michael Gittings, the collaborative duo behind Pit Projects, challenge society’s rampant consumerism and widespread complacency – prompting us to engage with the immediate materials that are right in front of us, instead of searching for the new. For Future Ambition they present a collection of functional objects – a pendant light, table lamp, side table and wall cabinet – created from discarded glass and metal salvaged from illegal tips in Melbourne’s west, along with roadside refuse – including a shattered glass bus shelter. As artists working in ceramic, craft and metal disciplines respectively, Hagberg and Gittings apply their deep material understanding to the found materials, embracing the process of experimentation and discovery. The textured, kiln-formed glass featured in their works is made from glass cast into moulds created with wet cardboard litter, while the welded steel is textured by rust and lives of past use.

“Working with found materials develops your material and technical skills in uniquely tacit way,” says Pit Projects. “This way of working invariably results in unexpected discovery and new directions, something that is both highly generative and inspiring.”

Isabel Avendaño-Hazbún has developed a new upholstery material, made from discarded rubber bicycle tyres sourced from local bike shops that would otherwise end up in landfills. Working out of her home studio in Melbourne, Avendaño Hazbún uses analogue tools and machines of her own invention to break the rubber tyres down into long threads, handwoven into a pliable and durable rope. Building on her chair design originally exhibited at Craft in the exhibition The Chair (2022), she upholsters the chair, weaving the rope through the timber frame. The work will be shown at Craft as part of Future Ambition.

“I love the properties of this material: its elasticity and friction,” says Avendaño-Hazbún. “This material is incredibly versatile and has endless applications. It is not only aesthetically pleasing when manipulated thoughtfully but also has practical applications for manufacturing processes.”

By/Product

1 May – 14 June

Artist: Locki Humphrey

In their debut solo exhibition at Craft, emerging artist-designer Locki Humphrey presents a furniture collection that embraces material circularity and a process-led approach. For the third iteration of By/Product – an exhibition series that challenges artists to repurpose discarded materials into collectable furniture, art and craft – Humphrey presents Oxide, a collection featuring a lamp, occasional chair, shelving, coffee table and wall work. The works are constructed from remnants of industrial manufacturing, including discarded steel and textile waste; the timber is stained with iron oxide derived from metal waste. Humphrey uses a leather alternative as upholstery, made from the Prickly Pear, an invasive cactus species and identified as among Australia’s worst weeds of national significance. The works feature a restrained palette, with raw metal, undyed recycled fabrics and stained timber.

“We can begin to understand objects as only one iteration of an assemblage of materials, knowing it’s part of a larger life cycle, where each component has a history and a future,” says Humphrey. “We can live in a world where objects are celebrated for their beauty, as well as their flexibility, their ability to be pulled apart and transformed into something else.”

“Craft has long held a unique place at the forefront of ideas that reflect issues and concerns of our time. There is an immensely inspiring groundswell of artists who are driving material use and innovation. Looking beyond the end result, we can trace the rigour in every step of the making process, every element that is considered and used in the creation of the works. We established Conscious Craft as a movement toward sustainable production models that challenge industries and inspire consumers to rethink their relationship with materials and the objects they acquire,” says Nicole Durling, Executive Director of Craft Victoria.

Shop the Conscious Craft Collection: shop.craft.org.au/collections/consciouscollection