In designer Karen Ryan's exhibition Awkward: Whittle and Black Ink at the Marsden Woo Gallery, old chairs are reworked. Some are stained with black ink; others are whittled bare. Some have been mutilated: limbs or struts are missing. Black and white are then conjoined in pairs, or occasionally in threesomes. The items fill the gallery's Project Space in a curious dance of pieces that tease you into reexamining the forms these overfamiliar items take on. Take the pairs apart and they become, once again, useful objects; chairs you can sit on.
This isn't the first time Karen Ryan has re-configured old chairs. In 2005, Ryan showed her Custom Made chairs at 100% Design – hybrid chairs constructed of two or three styles of discarded furniture. We spoke to Ryan last week about her latest exhibition.
You've been making your Custom Made chairs for a while now; what is it that keeps you coming back to old chairs?
I have always been concerned with what is discarded and unwanted. It is not fashion that dictates any influence upon my use of old chairs but the realism that there is enough mass produced furniture.
We're used to designers finding new use for discarded objects. Awkward makes discarded objects deliberately useless. Is it a kind of homage to the work they've done?
'Awkward' Whittle & Black Ink traverse from the functional to disfunctional and back again. The whittle chairs can become separated from their Black Ink partners and both chairs can be used. Definitions of aesthetics and functional expectations are challenged.
As a designer who is exhibiting in an art gallery space, are you in a bit of an awkward space yourself?
I do not believe in giving design boundaries either of how its used or where its exhibited. Neither do I limit to what ends design may be, leaving all possibilities open.
What makes a great designer?
There are many forms of excellent design and I would not judge one over the other but celebrate the open practice of design what ever it conjures.
What one object would you hate to be without? Why?
Objects are just objects, I am not fussed.
Awkward: Whittle and Black Ink, by Karen Ryan. The chairs separated
Awkward: Whittle and Black Ink by Karen Ryan at Marsden Woo Project Space
Awkward: Whittle & Black Ink by Karen Ryan
Awkward work in progress: chairs used in Awkward: Whittle & Black Ink by Karen Ryan, 'Found on street round the corner from where I live.' Photo by Karen Ryan
Awkward by Karen Ryan is at Marsden Woo Gallery until 6 November
