High Hopes: BMDO’s Debut Solo Exhibition in Melbourne.

BMDO presents High Hopes, a new collection of functional objects at Melbourne’s favourite esoteric gallery—and frequenter of our pages—Oigall Projects in Fitzroy. BMDO raises questions: “What meaning is built into furniture?” and “Where is the acceptable cross-section of art and everyday objects?”, as the studio’s debut solo exhibition pokes around these edges, exploring high and low materials, and object status.

A creative dialogue between Melbourne-based Fletcher Barns (of Volker Haug) and Los Angeles-based James L. Marshall (of Christopher Boots), BMDO combines their backgrounds in Industrial Design and Fine Art to provide a conceptual basis for creative thinking, processes and making/manufacturing. Blending traditional and future-oriented aesthetics, BMDO creates furniture and art objects with attention to material, context and detail.

Case in point is BMDO’s take on one of the most familiar domestic objects with their Bin / Basket. This receptacle is not limited to just trash though, and can be used to manage any number of things, or nothing at all if you wish. For Chair 09, the duo remixes an old favourite with a new rug design fabricated by craftspeople in Nepal.

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Fletcher and James worked in collaboration with Replica Project to develop chair covers in sourced archival fabrics, taking a found chair and re-contextualising it into a considered design object. The fabrics can also be found in a large and alluring floor lamp that may look vaguely familiar. “BMDO’s floor lamp came to us in its original form as part of Melbourne Design Week 2023,” the team at Oigall Projects elaborates. “After its success, some slight adjustments and a deep dive into an ocean of fabric archives, it is back as part of their presentation ‘High Hopes’ in a silk taffeta. We will be producing a limited edition run with a series of different fabrics to choose from.”

Working in tandem across the sea, High Hopes represents a series of DMs, missed calls, texts, and just enough hemispherical time zone cross-over. The exhibition runs until the 2nd of March at the Oigall Projects Gallery.

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[Images courtesy of BMDO. Photography by Annika Kafcaloudis.]