Reimagining Australian identity narratives through cross-cultural design collaborations

Published on the 26 February 2026

Trent Jansen and Nyikina designer Johnny Nargoodah collaborate on collectable furniture. Photo: Romella Pereira.

Cross-cultural collaborations can embody and model more dialogic national identity narratives.

Ethical collaborations in design can articulate transformational revisions of Australian identity narratives, says an avant-garde object designer from UNSW’s School of Art & Design.

Dr Trent Jansen creates limited-edition and one-off pieces, or storied artefacts, often through cross-cultural collaborations. His work engages with socio-cultural contexts, questioning our values, fears and fascinations, and our histories.

“We tell and retell this mainstay of myths about national identity over and over again, and often the truth is questionable,” he says.

“These myths are very much connected to white male Australia, providing a foundation for patriarchal colonial identity.

“Cross-cultural collaborations can embody and model more dialogic understandings of our complex pasts and hold space for more inclusive futures.”

Dr Jansen has collaborated with artists and designers, including Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara punu (wood) artist Tanya Singer, Djabugay and Western Yalanji punu artist Errol Evans, Mutti Mutti/Yorta Yorta and Boon Wurrung/Wemba Wemba artist and curator Maree Clarke, and Nyikina designer Johnny Nargoodah.

He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, including at ART021 and JingArt, China; Galleria Rossana Orlandi, Italy; Design Miami, US and Switzerland; and London Design Museum, UK.

His practice-led research engages in what he calls design anthropology to represent “our 65,000 plus years of rich and diverse cultures, languages and histories”.

Design anthropology moves beyond Modernist pragmatism or aestheticism to foreground beautiful imperfections of humanity, he says. It draws on material culture theory, examining the relationship between people and their things, spanning the personal and the political.

“It’s about embodying culture – values, ideas, attitudes and assumptions – in the artefact.” The inspiration for his work comes frequently from research and a wider curiosity with “untold stories”.

“Some are associated with remote places or they're part of our early history that doesn't often get told. They can be First Nations stories, owned by my collaborators, that we explore and develop together,” he says.

“I could not attempt to produce work that is a true representation of Australian-ness without acknowledging the significant contribution of First Nations Australians to our experience of nationhood.”

The Briggs Family Tea Set

His first such collaboration, ‘The Briggs Family Tea Set’ (2011), with Trawlwoolway artist Vicki West was a pivotal moment in his practice. This project was commissioned by Broached Commissions and supported by Creative Australia.

The tea set responds to the controversial colonial union – described as mutual and involuntary in differing accounts – of free settler George Briggs, who arrived in Australia in 1804, and Woretermoeteyenner, a Pairrebeenne woman.

“They had four children with their first daughter Dolly recorded as the first person of mixed Indigenous and British heritage born in the colony. It's almost certainly not true but that was the myth surrounding her.

“The family represents in microcosm the many varied aspects of colonial and Aboriginal relationships that were being forced and forged throughout Australia during this period of our history.”

Dr Jansen travelled to Tasmania to “learn from people with a cultural connection to the story – [Professor] Greg Lehman, Aunty Vicki West, Aunty Lola Greeno who is a living treasure of Australian craft, Aunty Patsy Cameron – and more importantly ask permission to do the project,” he says.

“Aunty Vicki took me out to Shelly Beach, where she sources a lot of her bull kelp [a type of seaweed]. Bull kelp was widely used by Aboriginal people of the region.

“It’s a women's business material, so she did the making. We developed ways of forming the kelp to make the industrial components, working together in her kitchen. She keeps the bull kelp in this gigantic freezer out under her porch.”

‘The Briggs Family Tea Set’ (2011), a collaboration with Trawlwoolway artist Vicki West, responds to the controversial colonial union of free settler George Briggs and Woretermoeteyenner, a Pairrebeenne woman. Photo: Scottie Cameron.

The teapot and sugar bowl represent Briggs and Woretermoeteyenner respectively. The tea pot juxtaposes British tradition epitomised in the spout of Worcester or Bow Porcelain with a gnarly, organic body and handle that borrow their form from roots Briggs was forced to eat in hard times.

“Its form represents the harsh environment and hard man he became as a result,” Dr Jansen says.

“The sugar bowl pairs an elegant Pairrebeenne kelp water carrier with the courtly handle and lid derived from French and British silverware and Porcelain houses of the period.

“Its hybrid grace represents Woretermoeteyenner as an important member of local royalty, a woman that did all that she could to maintain her family line.”

Cultural artefacts that respond to ecological concerns

The Ngumu Janka Warnti low chair, a collaboration between Dr Jansen and Nyikina designer Johnny Nargoodah, recently featured in the exhibition re·form at Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia.

re·form showcases pioneering international art and design rooted in a deep exploration of craft and cultural narrative. The presented works redefine material, form and meaning in the twenty-first century.

The designers have been collaborating on collectable furniture since they met in Mr Nargoodah’s hometown of Fitzroy Crossing in 2016. Their artistic partnership produces unorthodox outcomes through their divergent sensibilities and skills in working animal skins.

Mr Nargoodah has spent much of his life working with leather as a saddler on remote cattle stations, and Dr Jansen experiments with leather and animal pelts in his work.

The low chair comes from their shared body of work Partu | Skin (2020) for Gallery Sally Dan Cuthbert. Partu is the Walmajarri word for skin; Ngumu Jangka Warnti, the Walmajarri phrase for ‘all made from rubbish’. The work responds to Australia’s cultural histories and ecological concerns.

This project was supported by Creative Australia, Arts Western Australia, UNSW and the National Gallery of Victoria. Mr Nargoodah is represented by Mangkaja Arts in Fitzroy Crossing.

The design began with a trip to the local scrap metal yard. “We salvaged a selection of discarded aluminium mesh and used this found metal as the starting point for experimentation,” Dr Jansen says.

The Ngumu Janka Warnti (All Made from Rubbish) Low Chair in Black. Photo: Romella Pereira.

The design process was organic, embedded in the making. They cut a mesh substrate vaguely in the shape of a chair, together beating the material with hammers, concrete blocks and tree stumps until it took on a form they both liked.

“This beaten geometry was then softened by laminating New Zealand saddle leather to skin the mesh, masking its geometry and softening its idiosyncratic undulations,” Dr Jansen says.

For Mr Nargoodah, the work’s significance is multi-faceted, from the making to recycling, history, and its immersive sensory experience.

“We use rubbish, recycled frames, we make chairs and cabinets, and use the leather to make it look good, to make it furniture that is usable and looks nice. It is important to reuse old rubbish we find,” Mr Nargoodah says.

“The leather gives it a reference to the history of Fitzroy Crossing and station life. Saddlers used to come and repair saddles using leather, making twisted rope out of cowhide. This is what I think about when we are using the leather …

“The smell of that leather is so good. It brings back memories, triggers those old memories of walking around the saddle room in Noonkanbah shed. There is a sensory response, that’s important.”

Similarly, Dr Jansen’s collaboration with artist Tanya Singer, Manta Pilti | Dry Sand (2023), articulates the catastrophic effects of the human-induced climate crisis on Country around Indulkana in remote South Australia.

The project references Parakeelya, a small native purple flower, and the hot dry earth of Country as tangible examples of ecosystem degradation in the region, Dr Jansen says.

“The Parakeelya used to blanket the Indulkana hills, but with the increased heat, reduced rainfall and dry, sandy soil, it’s now hard to find.”

This fading bloom, Ms Singer’s mother’s favourite, together with the cracking sand inform the furniture collection’s design, an evocation of both personal and universal impact.

The collection was originally exhibited as part of Kuruṉpa Kuṉpu | Strong Spirit (2021-2023), through Fremantle Arts Centre (2021-23) in association with Maruku Arts, a non-for-profit arts and crafts organisation, supporting Aṉangu throughout the Western and Central Deserts.

This project was supported by The American Hardwood Export Council, the Australia Council, CreateSA , the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, UNSW Art & Design, The National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Design Week and Artbank.

“It represents the disruption of the climate crisis. Seasonal patterns of plants and animals that have supported life in Indulkana, governing food collection, hunting, totemic relationships, and Law on Country for tens of thousands of years are now out of alignment.”

These motifs embody and communicate this complex and troubling narrative, reminding us of our responsibilities to our shared environment, he says. “There's so much within Indigenous value systems, storytelling, and ways of knowing, being and making that we could benefit from.

“Relationality with ecosystem, with Country, with people and Culture hold many of the keys we need to thrive into the future, to [help us to] stop behaving in such a top-down extractivist [manner], to stop commodifying the world and recognise our place in it.”