MPavilion

The Melbourne Fashion Showcase forms part of Hong Kong Business of Design Week (BoDW), Asia’s premier design event, where the international spotlight will be on Melbourne as the event’s official partner city. Melbourne was the first Southern Hemisphere city to partner this major event, following 2017 Country Partner, Italy.

BoDW presents an unprecedented opportunity for Melbourne’s most influential fashion designers, and emerging brands, to tell their story to the world. Melbourne will send its most outstanding design masters and influential fashion business figures to Hong Kong where they can use the valuable platform to exchange ideas, network and explore new business opportunities.

The Victorian Government, through Creative Victoria, is supporting the mission to promote local fashion into a global marketplace.

Revisit Katrina Jojkity, Shareena Clanton, Philip Boon and Virginia Dowzer's discussion ahead of the showcase.

Enjoy a rare treat from Melbourne Theatre Company at MPavilion over three summer evenings as MTC presents a series exploring different facets of modern theatre practice. Hear play-readings of new Australian dramatic works commissioned by MTC and enjoy a discussion of the theatrical process with special international guest director Lila Neugebauer. Here they discussed the warp and weft of theatre, its role in shaping the future, and how it works both here and overseas. Make new discoveries and see how flashes of inspiration play an important part in the development of new and exciting theatre that speaks to the problems and possibilities of our time.

In demand by America’s finest new generation of writers, from Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker to Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Lila Neugebauer will discuss the commercial pressures of being an artist in New York, and nurturing playwrights in such a public, pressure-cooker environment.

We live in cities and towns that reflect the denial of Indigenous histories and perspectives, but momentum around this issue is building. What role can design play in addressing the lack of memorials and visibility to the memories and legacy of the frontier wars in Australia? What are the challenges around this for both non-Indigenous and Indigenous designers?

MPavilion’s second annual BLAKitecture forum brought together Indigenous built environment practitioners on the Yaluk-ut Weelam land of the Boon Wurrung people. The forum aimed to centralise Indigenous voices in conversations about architecture, the representation of histories, the present state and the future of our built environments. BLAKitecture was curated by MPavilion’s program consultant Sarah Lynn Rees.

Image:

Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner (2016)

Brook Andrew & Trent Walter

Bluestone, aluminium, steel, archival paper, Agfa P55 photo plates on aluminium

Commissioned by the City of Melbourne, 2016

City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection

This event was kindly sponsored by RMIT Architecture.

We all learn to navigate society and our lives differently. For some, the path to wellbeing and fulfilment comes with unimaginable obstacles, amongst them societal inequality, health-related setbacks, and housing and family instability. How can we as a community better help those in need to reorient themselves within complex systems? How do we seek and create alternative routes to healthy and happy lives? How do we give everyone the tools needed to find their way?

Revisit this lively tag-team discussion featuring a line-up of individuals working in and designing to address social inequality as part of our MRelay series. Hosted by Dr Emma O’Brien OAM, speaking will be artist Troy Innocent; founder of The Water Well Project, Dr Linny Phuong; Ellen Jacobsen, social impact manager of HoMie Streetwear; Nigel Taylor, CEO Lifesaving Victoria; Mark Ayres of Today Design Studio; Fiona Gillmore, creative director of ID Lab; architect and researcher Dr Isun A Kazerani; Donna Stolzenberg, founder of the National Homeless Collective, and philosophy educator and writer Eliana Horn.

This event was supported by VicHealth and 3RRR.

We all learn to navigate society and our lives differently. For some, the path to wellbeing and fulfilment comes with unimaginable obstacles, amongst them societal inequality, health-related setbacks, and housing and family instability. How can we as a community better help those in need to reorient themselves within complex systems? How do we seek and create alternative routes to healthy and happy lives? How do we give everyone the tools needed to find their way?

Revisit this lively tag-team discussion featuring a line-up of individuals working in and designing to address social inequality as part of our MRelay series. Hosted by Dr Emma O’Brien OAM, speaking will be artist Troy Innocent; founder of The Water Well Project, Dr Linny Phuong; Ellen Jacobsen, social impact manager of HoMie Streetwear; Nigel Taylor, CEO Lifesaving Victoria; Mark Ayres of Today Design Studio; Fiona Gillmore, creative director of ID Lab; architect and researcher Dr Isun A Kazerani; Donna Stolzenberg, founder of the National Homeless Collective, and philosophy educator and writer Eliana Horn.

This event was supported by VicHealth and 3RRR.

Often named as one of the most important figures in contemporary British art, Hannah Barry is the founder of the Bold Tendencies Community Interest Company and Hannah Barry Gallery, both based in Peckham, South London. Transforming its multi-storey car park space into acclaimed programs of contemporary art, Bold Tendencies has reimagined South London and captured the attention of the art world as well the broader public, drawing nearly two million visitors since 2007. It has also hosted the BBC Proms, opera, dance and architectural projects, recontextualising these multidisciplinary forms.

Return to a conversation with Hannah Barry and Annika Kristensen, senior curator of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), as Hannah discusses the development of Bold Tendencies and its impact on London’s cultural and physical landscape; programming for public and unconventional spaces, and engaging audiences in contemporary cultural experiments.

Over the past twenty years we have seen very significant changes in the way in which art museums work with artists and how they engage with their public.

Celebrated former director of Tate, Sir Nicholas Serota CH, will discuss the impact of these changes on the outlook and programs of museums with special reference to the evolution of Tate during the period in which he led on the creation of Tate Modern, the adoption of a wider international perspective and the development of a new approach to audiences. In conversation with Rebecca Coates, director of the Shepparton Art Museum.

Sir Nicholas Serota CH was invited to MPavilion as a guest of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation courtesy of the Gordon Darling Foundation.

For MPavilion 2018's opening week, we were privileged to hear from two architects who have forged ahead in a traditionally male-dominated space.

Carme Pinós and Kerstin Thompson were invited to have an informal discussion as part of Parlour's 'In Conversation' series. The chat was billed as an informal chat between two practitioners... only with an audience in attendance.

The two architects charted public space, ideas of neighbourly intimacy, and Kerstin's penchant for seeing life happen behind lit windows at night. We hope you find this a truly enlightening conversation.

Carme Pinós is a major influence on global architecture through her sharp and poetic designs and humanistic design philosophy, leading urgent conversations about public architecture, social housing and urban refurbishment.

She joined journalist and author Virginia Trioli in conversation with Naomi Milgrom AO, founder of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, the organisation that commissions the architect of each MPavilion. The trio talks all things urban design, leadership and the creative journey of 2018's stunning MPavilion.

Based in Barcelona, Pinós established Estudio Carme Pinós in 1991 following early international recognition for her work with the late Enric Miralles. Distinctive projects such as the CaixaForum Cultural and Exhibition Centre in Zaragoza (Spain), the Cube Office Towers I and II in Guadalajara (Mexico) and the Department Building of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria) have foregrounded Carme’s interests in human connection, folded materials and experiential design.

Diversity has become a catchcry, a battle cry and an umbrella term for opportunity and access—but is it holding us back? Does the framing of diversity in conversations about our cities and institutions continue to keep minorities and the underprivileged at the margins? How can we move beyond a focus on otherness, and to where do we move? As political and economic forces create rapidly changing populations, engaging design to respond to these changes is not only essential but also urgent. From the ways we house and educate to how we socialise and celebrate heritage, there’s much to consider in building the global city.

Listen back to the distinctions and possibilities of the global city with a line-up of esteemed guests in a lively tag-team conversation as part of our annual MRelay series.

Hosted by social change campaigner Nevena Spirovska, speakers include Farah Farouque, chair of Social Studio; Filipino-Australian writer and emerging curator Andy Butler; MPavilion 2018 Writer in Residence Maddee Clark; visual artists and co-director of A Centre for Everything, Gabrielle de Vietri; openly gay Imam, Nur Warsame; Immigration Museum general manager Rohini Kappadath; Moroccan Soup Kitchen owner and Speed Date a Muslim organiser Hana Assafiri; artist Stanislava Pinchuk (aka Miso);Leah Jing of Liminal magazine and photojournalist and Asylum Seeker Resource Centre volunteer Norman Katende.

This event was supported by VicHealth.