Transformative Repair
Presented during Melbourne Design Week, Transformative Repair explored repair as both a creative and environmental practice, revealing how discarded materials can be reimagined through innovative design and artistic experimentation.
Image credit: Jack Craig’s experimental moulded carpet module, transformed by Mark Dineen, Jack Craig and Dale Hardiman
Photo by Mark Dineen
Across various forms of material expression, Transformative Repair reimagined the value of objects that had ostensibly been stripped of utilitarian function and aesthetic appeal. Presented by Useful Objects, a gallery specialising in collectible design, and shown as part of Melbourne Design Week 2026, the exhibition responded to the environmental and cultural concerns of the Anthropocene, encouraging audiences to reconsider how processes of reinvention may lead to new understandings of sustainable practice. Gathering a cohort of Australian and international artists, practitioners, and designers from a range of disciplines, Transformative Repair questioned the capitalist logic that, while relentlessly deeming objects ‘obsolete’, situates value within a singular function or context. Challenging this reductive perspective, the exhibition foregrounded the multiplicities and possibilities inherent within our material environment, revealing the various lives, identities and personalities any given object may assume through creative transformation.
Led by Dr Guy Keulemans (Adelaide University) and Dr Trent Jansen (University of NSW), the exhibition marked the third and final public showcase under the Transformative Repair banner. In collaboration with JamFactory and the Australian Design Centre, and supported by the Australian Research Council, Keulemans and Jansen sustained a 6-year research period that sought to reassess contemporary consumer culture, culminating in experimental models of material renewal that considered how a more sustainable Australian design landscape might be envisioned. Coinciding with the exhibition at Useful Objects, Keulemans also released Transformative Repair (Uro Publications, Melbourne), a publication that, while detailing the research collective’s interdisciplinary projects, captured... Subscribe to read all articles in full
