Award winning design on display at A&D ANNUAL

Ground avocado seeds form the basis of an award-winning resin fruitbowl, one of almost 200 art works featured in this year’s A&D ANNUAL, UNSW Art & Design’s exhibition of graduate work.

Madeleine Dennis’s origami-inspired Original Seed fruitbowl combines flair with functionality, using geometric shelves to separate individual pieces of fruit for maximum freshness.

Ground-down avocado seeds are mixed with a biodegradable resin to give the bowl its unique hue and texture.

Dennis won best Product Innovation at this year’s International Green Interior Awards for the bowl design, beating established Australian designers like Admonter and Dylan Falecki.

Dennis created Original Seed as part of her final-year Bachelor of Design project that focused on designs with social impact.

“I had three aims – to create a seasonal object, design a product for the home and to use waste to craft something ornamental,” she said.

“I wanted to make something to demonstrate that the things we needlessly throw away can be repurposed into something useful and beautiful.”

Bringing her origami-inspired design to life was the hardest part, requiring countless prototypes first in paper, then perspex and silicon until the parameters were just right.

“It took a lot of time, and trial and error. We’re constantly told that an important part of experimentation is failure, and that through failure you’ll find a robust design solution.”

Dennis will continue her work with the avocado resin as part of her Honours project in 2016, when she hopes to collaborate with materials scientists to test its strength and explore uses on a larger, more industrial scale.

The UNSW A&D ANNUAL is Australia’s largest showcase of graduate work, serving as a springboard for the next generation of artists, designers, makers and media creators.

The multi-site exhibition and screenings will feature work from close to 200 creatives in fields including installation, animation, media and film, digital media and graphic design, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, sound, furniture and jewellery, ceramics and textile design.

Numerous UNSW Art & Design graduates have gone on to high-profile careers. They include: Hany Armanious, Del Kathryn Barton, Mikala Dwyer, Adam Cullen, Abi Alice, Jonathan Jones, Shaun Gladwell, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, Clinton Nain, Janet Laurence, Angelica Mesiti, Brook Andrew, Trent Jansen, Bronwyn Oliver and the team from Dinosaur Designs.

This year, graduate Nigel Milsom’s gothic portrait of Sydney barrister Charles Waterstreet won the Archibald prize, the third consecutive year of success for UNSW Art & Design in one of Australia’s most prestigious portrait competitions.

UNSW Art & Design is ranked in the Global top 25 Art and Design faculties by the QS World University Rankings by Subject (2015) and is Australia’s leading creative research faculty according to the Australian Research Council in its current Excellence in Research Australia report.

What: UNSW A&D ANNUAL Graduate Exhibition 2015

When: 25 November–12 December, 10am-5pm, Tuesday–Saturday

Where: UNSW Art & Design Paddington Campus, corner of Oxford St and Greens Rd, Paddington

A&D ANNUAL Screening: Friday 4 December, 6pm, Chauvel Cinema, 249 Oxford Street, Paddington