James Lemon — Zoe, 2022

"The swing is one of the funnest chairs. In close competition is the rocking chair or the powerful office chair that lifts you up and down.  Heatwave Zoe is the first heatwave to be given a name. Like some demon baby (DB hereinafter). Naming the DB feels wrong yet also the right thing to do. Yes, it’s a DB, but it is still OUR DB. We have to call it something. We can't just call it DB, however cool that is. I live next to a park and if I'm up at an antisocial hour, I sit there with my tea and vibe. Once I caught myself staring at the swings as I flicked through the pages of my audiobook imagining a chaotic heatwave (let’s say heatwave Jemima after my housemate's cat) blowing through and melting everything in sight. The transformative power of fire: entrancing. The swing's exhilarating experience: love. What’s gonna happen to the gorgeous, fun things during demonbabythropocene? I don’t think I’ll be able to look away, it might be beautiful. This chair is made of bronze and has stainless-steel chain. You can swing on it if you like."

– James Lemon

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James Lemon is a New Zealand born artist working from Northcote, Melbourne. He explores and experiments with clay as a generative activity to develop works that are sculptural and functional. His hand-thrown pieces are organic and intuitive, with finishes that range from soft, sugary glazes to melting, painterly surfaces.

Known for his ceramic vessels with highly gestural surface abstraction, Lemon’s new series of sculptural forms are highly tactile, playful and dynamic objects. While crafted using traditional methods of hand-building and coiling, his pieces are also warped to express movement and gesture. Their upscaled and warped traditional forms challenge notions of functionality inherent to these objects and expose the material as the agent, a celebration of materiality.

Lemon's work has been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) for their permanent collection, and he has created series for Heidi Museum of Modern Art and Craft Victoria.

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The Chair 

Anna Varendorff, Ash Allen, Ashley Eriksmoen, Bern Chandley, Bonhula Yunupingu & Damien Wright, Brodie Neill, Brud Studia, Cordon Salon, Dean Norton, Duncan Young & Noah Hartley, Georgia Weitenberg, Isabel Avendano-Hazbun, James Lemon, Jess Humpston, Jill Stevenson, Johnny Nargoodah & Trent Jansen, Nicole Lawrence & Thomas Coward, Liam Mugavin, Marta Figueiredo, Michael Gittings, Sam Tomkins, Iain [Max] Maxwell & Ben Ennis-Butler, Trent Jansen for Broached Monsters by Broached Commissions, Two Lines Studio, Zachary Frankel.

Read more about The Chair here

'The Chair' exhibition is the first in a series presented by Craft Victoria honouring iconic objects of functional craft and design with a material driven approach.

Material: bronze, stainless steel chain

Dimensions: approx. 7 4 x 15 (chain approx. 350 cm)

Limited Edition of 3 available, on a lead time of 8 weeks. Please enquire with the team at Craft for details shop@craft.org.au or call +61 3 9650 7775