Design Tasmania
Corner of Brisbane and Tamar streets
Launceston, 7250
Tasmania
info@designtasmania.com.au
+61 3 6331 5506
Tasmania Makes 25 - Exhibition Two
1 June - 21 September 2025
Tasmania Makes is an annual platform in its second year, designed to celebrate and invigorate Tasmania's rich culture of innovation and craftsmanship across all design disciplines. Known for our thoughtful, resourceful and naturally sustainable way of working, Tasmania boasts an ever-expanding reputation for its reliably good and distinct vernacular design.
From the Southeast Coast and Hobart to Launceston, 16 designers from traditional design disciplines spanning furniture, ceramics, jewellery, textiles, and object design have been invited to reconsider and refine their practice, through the creation of new work responding to local or global imperatives. The design pieces have been developed through a series of intensive workshops with Simon Ancher Studios (Launceston) and DOT (Designed Objects Tasmania, Hobart) and are being exhibited in various stages from prototypes through to resolved works. For Tasmania Makes 25, three local industry partners have supported select designers through supply of materials and production support including Hydrowood (myrtle), Timber World (Eucalyptus nitens) and Waverley Mills (wool and upholstery fabric production).
Crossing two exhibitions over eight months, the exhibitions features designers such as an architect creating small-scale accessible objects, a public artist designing lamps with VR technology, and a ceramicist transforming Knocklofty Reserve’s historic quarry refuse into tiles for a contemporary coffee table.
Employed are a spectrum of making modes, from the practical to philosophical, traditional hand tools to advanced digital processes, all exemplifying a unique Tasmanian approach to shaping the future through design.
Note: Most artwork is for sale, with re-editions by commission.
To preview the sales catalogue, artisticdirector@designtasmania.com.au outlining your interest
Exhibition Two 1 June - 21 September features work by:
Craig Ashton | Travis Bell | Geoff Farquhar | Benjamin Grieve-Johnson | Sharon O'Donnell | Stuart Williams
Exhibition One 24 Jan - 31 May featured work by:
Andrea Barker | Nanna Bayer | Kate Bowmam | Christopher Clinton | Shauna Mayben | Liam Starcevich | Scott van Tuil | Adam Wallace | Isaac Williams
Image (right):
Imprints of Time - Sharon O'Donnell, Photo credit: Ivett Dodd Photography
MEDIA:
Garland Magazine
Architecture AU
Australian Wood Review
Green Magazine
Art Guide
Craig Ashton
Craig Ashton, born in Tasmania, works from a studio based in the coastal town of Ulverstone. Since completing an Associate Degree in Furniture Design (2008) and Bachelor of Contemporary Arts (2015-2018) he has explored and experimented with various techniques and materials. In 2021, supported by a grant from Arts Tasmania, Craig undertook a mentorship in bronze casting with renowned Tasmanian artist, David Hamilton, enabling him to refine his skills in working with bronze and integrating the medium into his design and sculpture to create furniture
He works with fibreglass, wood, ceramics, and bronze to create sculptures, functional objects, and furniture. His practice is deeply centred around the dynamic relationship between art and the utilitarian—exploring where one begins and the other ends, constantly in flux and flow, much like nature itself. He has exhibited in group exhibitions in Melbourne and Tasmania and has been selected for Tidal 2022, 2024, and the Bay of Fires Art Prize 2024. His work is held in private collections across Australia, and he was commissioned to create a Memorial Trophy for the Bondi Surf Club.
Craig Ashton - Facebook
Craig Ashton - Instagram
Photo by Richard Harmey
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Connections
Connections are components designed to utilise timber offcuts and streamline the making of coffee tables, plinths, and dining tables. Using the age-old lost wax process to cast the bronze, each piece is then filed and buffed, leaving slight facets and inclusions that create details which are both unique and individual, serving as a point of conversation. This is an ongoing exploration into creating idiosyncratic components for both furniture and functional objects using lost wax casting.
Photo by Richard Harmey
Travis Bell
Travis Bell (b. Australia, 1991) is a Launceston-based artist, designer, and educator who, through his ceramics practice, explores the intersection of balance and fragility and their relationship to material expectations and worth, by examining function as sculpture and the disciplined execution of craft.
Completing a Bachelor of Contemporary Art with Honours at the University of Tasmania. During his studies, he also studied at the University of Virginia, USA, and the Central University of Tibetan Studies in India.
Now back in Launceston, he serves as a ceramic lecturer at the University of Tasmania. He is represented by Stockton & Co in Launceston, Handmark Gallery in Hobart, and Pépite in Melbourne. His work was featured in the 2023 RISE exhibition at QVMAG and in the Journal of Australian Ceramics. He has exhibited at Sawtooth ARI, Devonport Regional Gallery, and Powerhouse Gallery.
Travis Bell - Instagram
Two Stacks
Two Stacks explores the possibilities of ceramics in furniture, and how the indelible links between clay and function can be investigated in contemporary and non-traditional ways. These stacks of vessels with a tabletop piece are inspired by the south-asian tiffin, exploring stacking as a method of storage and side table. These pieces are based in an artistic practice where play and materiality are central, with Two Stacks exploring the possibilities of ceramics as furniture and object.
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Geoff Farquhar-Still
Geoff Farquhar-Still has a diverse sculpture practice, ranging from intricate small-scale machines to ambitious installations, large-scale public art, and interactive play environments, with a focus on site-specific artworks.
His practice is firmly rooted in hands-on making, blending a handcrafted sensibility with CNC technology and utilizing VR and AR tools for holographic design and fabrication.
This approach melds traditional artisan manufacturing practices with cutting-edge technology to efficiently and accurately realize large-scale designs that were previously unimaginable.
Since moving to Tasmania during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Geoff has continued to deliver public art projects on the mainland and numerous works in the public realm for the City of Launceston.
Most recently Geoff delivered the Burnie Gateway Commission - Welcome Gesture, in collaboration with David Hamilton, on behalf of State Growth and the Burnie City Council.
Geoff Farquhar-Still - Website
Photo courtesy of the Designer
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Turbine Lamp
The Turbine Lamp celebrates the long history of Hydroelectricity in Tasmania, dating back to the late 1800's, when, in 1890, the people of Launceston voted to become the first city in the southern hemisphere to have a publicly owned hydroelectric power station and electric street lights.
Waverley Mills predates this extraordinary event by a year when it installed the first commercial hydroelectric plant in Australia in 1889.
The woolen blanket was custom woven by Waverley Mills for this project, using colours drawn from the waterways and landscape of the surrounding countryside.
The Hydrowood Myrtle comes from sustainably sourced timber drawn from the Pieman river area, which was flooded by the creation of the Reece Dam to provide water for Hydroelectric power generation.
The 3D printed form reflects the sculptural nature of the turbines used in this form of power production.
The artist would like to thank Waverley Mills, Hydrowood and Simon Ancher for their generous assistance in the creation of this work.
Photo courtesy of the Designer
Ben Grieve-Johnson
Ben Grieve-Johnson was born in Australia in 1988 and works in Moonah, Hobart.
His practice draws on traditional, hand tool methods and extensive carving and steam bending to create intimate, contemporary pieces for the current historical moment. He views late technological capitalism as a unique and novel backdrop against which craft can re-establish itself and the crafted object can reveal new meaning for human beings.
His work has been shortlisted in the Clarence Design Prize, AWR Maker of the Year, and Australia’s Next Top Designer prize. He has been featured in group exhibitions at Design Tasmania and has exhibited at the Moonah Arts Centre.
Other Furniture - Website
Other Furniture - Instagram
Transfigure
Transfigure is the first in an ongoing series of light sculptures that explores the dynamic potential of materials under the labour of craft.
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo courtesy of the Designer
Sharon O'Donnell
Sharon O’Donnell, born in Canada in 1976 and now based in Elizabeth Town, Tasmania, is inspired by notions of belonging, place, home, and identity. Through her ceramic and textile studio practices, she explores connections between forest and family ecologies, acknowledging how nostalgia and childhood experiences inform her ways of making.
Sharon has exhibited at Handmark Gallery, Madeline Gordon Gallery, and Scotch Oakburn's s.p.a.c.e. gallery. In 2024, she collaborated with Waverley Woollen Mills for Design Tasmania’s Waverley Mills 150+ exhibition and most recently with Sawtooth Gallery for Sawtooth x UTAS Vitrine Series.
Currently, Sharon serves as an Artist Mentor for the University of Tasmania's UCP program, teaching in Object Design, and also teaches ceramics at Launceston’s Russell Street Studios.
Sharon O'Donnell - Instagram
Imprints of Time
These seven ceramic vessels, echoing hammered copper and aged metal, embody a deep connection to place, identity, and nostalgia. Their weathered surfaces evoke well-worn, utilitarian objects, anchoring personal memory in the textures of land and lived experience. Each form holds stories of belonging—echoes of home, time passed, and the places that continue to shape us.
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Stuart Williams
Stuart Williams is a designer and maker based in Tasmania, at the base of kunanyi, just a short walk from the forests that inspire his practice. Born in Western Australia, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Furniture Design, from the University of Tasmania. His process is hands-on, encompassing both one-off works and production-based furniture, lighting, and public art.
Stuart’s work explores how we interact with the natural environment and how a made object can carry the life of its maker while reflecting a sense of place. He aims to create objects that function as totems, gestures, and reminders of forgotten places—and the inner place where the true values of humanity reside.
Touching Space - Website
Touching Space - Instagram
Photo by Johnathan Wherrett
The Other
As we build and buy more without thought of the future, we lose sight of our true values. Values of nature, true human needs, community, connection to place, an understanding of creating history, to belong to history. The Other is a totem acting as thoughtful reminders.
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Photo by Ivett Dodd
Funding Bodies
Tasmania Makes is proudly sponsored by HydroWood, Timber World and Waverley Woollen Mills.
Design Tasmania is assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts, by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
