Trent Jansen
Trent Jansen — 'Swamp Creature' Chair, 2024
$29,500
Australia was once known as the Great Southern Land – an imaginary landmass conjured up to counterbalance the continents in the northern hemisphere, as far removed as possible from Britain, the center of the Christian world (Holden, 2001). An imaginary world, occupied by unimaginable creatures and monsters.
Some examples of these mythical creatures originated in both British and Aboriginal Australian folklore and were shared by the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal inhabitants of Sydney during the early years of colonisation. Stories of the yahoo, a creature that resembled a slender man, with long white straight hair, extraordinarily long arms and great talons (Unknown 1842), captured the imaginations of the new British settlers, and soon a fear of the yahoo became common between Aboriginal people and British settlers. This fear of a gruesome and vicious creature gained its potency from the folkloric tales that were used to substantiate its existence. These tales were suitably vague, their lack of detail attributed to the assumption that no one had survived an encounter (Holden, Thomas et al. 2001).
From this fascination with scary creatures and the deepest, darkest corners of the Australian landscape grows the Australian Gothic genre, spawning classic films like Peter Weir’s ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ and later Jonathan auf der Heide’s ‘Van Diemen’s Land’.
Building on the tradition of Australian Gothic in antipodean literary and film-making practice, the ‘Swamp Creature’ is silent and still, submerged in its stagnant pond, its skin wrinkled with constant exposure to moisture and stained by dark, viscous mud. This idea was given form through experimentation, as many iterations were tested to generate a combination of texture, colour, materiality and form that would embody this narrative. The final design incorporates an asymmetrical body, padded with thick, soft and segmented polyurethane foam. This form is then wrapped using a free-form version of the capitone upholstery technique, giving the ‘Swamp Creature’ an irregular, wrinkled, bulging and dark leathery skin.
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Trent Jansen is a designer based in Thirroul, Australia, and Lecturer at the University of New South Wales Art & Design, Sydney Australia. Jansen gained his PhD from the University of Wollongong under renowned Australian art historian Ian McLean, and his Bachelor of Design from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in Sydney. He spent part of his undergraduate degree in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. After a period working under Marcel Wanders in Amsterdam, Jansen returned to Australia to set up a design studio in Sydney, before moving his practice to Thirroul on the New South Wales South Coast.
Jansen applies his method of Design Anthropology to the design of limited edition and one-off pieces for clients including the Molonglo Group, Charter Hall and Mirvac. This approach is also applied to the design of products and furniture for manufacturers Vetralia, Moooi, DesignByThem and Tait. Jansen was one of the co-founders of Broached Commissions and is represented by Broached Commissions for Broached in-house commissions. Trent Jansen is represented by Gallery All in the USA and China, Galleria Rossana Orlandi in Europe and Mint Gallery in the UK.
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November 14, 2024 - January 25, 2025
Curated by Simone Haag
Craft is thrilled to invite internationally renowned Australian decorator Simone Haag as the guest curator of Craft’s final main gallery exhibition of 2024. Making her curatorial debut, Haag presents a group exhibition featuring works by more than 30 Australian artists.
Material: analine leather, plywood and polyurethane foam
Dimensions: 70 x 146 x 105cm
Please note when purchasing, exhibition works are to be collected when exhibition closes.
Shipping costs may be estimates. Please feel free to contact shop@craft.org.au who will be available to provide an Art Courier quote or shipping costs for larger items.