Celebrating the MECCA x NGV Women In Design Commission and the recent announcement of the 2024 designer, Christien Meindertsma, enjoy a day of free programming in NGV’s Great Hall, featuring insightful conversations, a drop-by workshop, DJ sets from RONA and refreshments from Allpress Espresso and LUNE Croissants.

Christien Meindertsma is the third recipient of the MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission, a major ongoing series that invites internationally renowned female designers and architects to create major new and significant work for the NGV Collection. Past recipients include Tatiana Bilbao (2022) and Bethan Laura Wood (2023). The five-year series is enabled by a significant contribution from MECCA through its social change movement, M-POWER, which champions equality and opportunity for women and girls, including elevating women in art and design.

Christien Meindertsma’s research-based design practice delves into the world of materials, such as flax, porcelain and wool. Through her practice, Meindertsma unravels the materials’ stories, their physical properties, applications, and the industrial systems that govern them. Over the past two decades, the visionary designer has predominantly produced objects, textile and furniture works exploring wide-ranging subjects such as animal by-products, household and textile waste, and forestry.

Meindertsma uses design to investigate complex problems, and in her most recent research she has developed a new method for fabricating items using waste and recycled wool that demonstrates its unique properties and potential uses – its softness, strength, warmth, acoustic properties, and biodegradable properties.

For the commission presented at NGV in October 2024, Meindertsma will produce her most ambitious work to date; a large-scale form made from European wool that would be otherwise disposed of. Revolutionising the ways that waste wool can be re-purposed, Meindertsma has developed a world-first robotic technology and technique in collaboration with Netherlands-based company Tools for Technology, making it possible to build structural, three-dimensional objects from wool.

PROGRAM

10am–3.30pm: Drop by Workshop 

11.00–11.30am: In-Conversation – The Designers with MECCA founder and Co-CEO Jo Horgan 

12.30–1.00pm: In-Conversation – Career Paths in Design 

1.30–1.45pm: Curator Talk – Bethan Laura Wood 

2.00–2.30pm: In-Conversation with Christien Meindertsma