FRIENDS & ASSOCIATES - 26 ORIGINAL FAKES. 2017.

EXHIBITION #1: 
26 ORIGINAL FAKES
16 — 26 March 2017
Watchmaker: 296 Smith St, Collingwood

Friends & Associates focuses on camaraderie in the Australian contemporary design discipline. With an interest in the possibilities of new knowledge, new design methods and approaches through collaboration, Friends & Associates looks to solidarity as the cornerstone in contemporary production. 

Realised as a series of exhibitions and collaborative production outcomes Friends & Associates is an ongoing process-based project initiated by Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan launched in 2017.

26 ORIGINAL FAKES looks to the uncertified replica in contemporary Australian design practice to reconsider the value of the copy in both the creative & commercial markets. 

Friends & Associates in collaboration with The National Gallery of Victoria invites the following 25 contemporary Australian designers to reconfigure and exhibit an existing replica design as a way to deconstruct how the design object is valued. Questioning how replica furniture draws focus to issues of authenticity, creative practice and the commercial market, the first realisation of Friends & Associates takes the theme ‘Design Values’ to consider how the design community can hack and reevaluate the replica.

Each participant was given a replica Jasper Morrison HAL Wood Chair. The original HAL Wood Chair was designed in 2010/2011, and is manufactured by VITRA in Switzerland. The HAL Wood Chair is now available as a replica from 10+ companies in Australia at varying price points, with the manufacturers origins unknown.

Description of work: SAVED

'As a designer, I share a design approach with Jasper Morrison to ‘make something useful and responsible’. SAVED, hand made from a metre of felt (recyclable/repurposable and vegan) is designed to slip over a replica/copy chair and to be used like a money box to save for the original piece. SAVED can be used on an assortment of fake replica copies to cover the works and make them become useful. The money collected can be used to support the original designer and encourage further investment in original and ethical design work.'

Exhibition catalogue

Read more about Friends & Associates #26originalfakes on Dezeen Fast Company Broadsheet  The Design Writer  and The Design Files