About exhibition

We need you! The Waterfront Gallery and atrium of Deakin’s Sally Walker building will be transformed into a space that invites the public to collaborate, co-design and make something new in response to the provocation: What if we already have enough?

Thousands of discarded objects, mainly made from plastic, will be used as potential material for an emergent collective design in the gallery space. Intergenerational participants will be invited to respond to a series of rules-based constraints as they engage in playful experimentation with the visual and sonic qualities of discarded and recycled material objects. This will be facilitated by Dr Merinda Kelly and Dr Fiona Phillips alongside a collective of arts practitioners and arts educators from Deakin’s Faculty of Arts and Education. This collaborative design-thinking approach generates new ways of knowing, seeing, feeling and thinking about how we might redesign in innovative and sustainable ways.

Design, construction, engineering and manufacturing materials from Deakin Library’s Special Collections will complement the exhibition and invite participants to consider radial design across disciplines. Acting as counter objects, the displays will shed light on narratives and viewpoints from different historical design, socio-cultural and socio-economic perspectives.

This exhibition will grow over time as participants add objects to reflect the process of co-design. Facilitated by a group of creative arts practitioners and educators, these accessible, participatory sessions are open to all ages and abilities.

This event is part of Geelong Design Week 2024, an initiative of Geelong UNESCO City of Design and the City of Greater Geelong.

Collaborators