Food Safe Project Scoops $10,000 deane Award
Furniture designer Tim Larkin has won the $10,000 Deane Award to produce a range of work focusing on the long-redundant, yet highly energy-efficient food safe.
Enthralled by this semi-permeable cooling device at his childhood house in Okaihau, Larkin along with writer Luke Feast and photographer Pete McColl will create a body of work that explores ideas generated by thinking about the food safe, and its unique architectural position between the indoors and outdoors.
“Food safes are archaic in that fridges have replaced them, yet they still exist (occasionally) as reminders of a time when our bodies were more phenomenally engaged with the natural world outside our houses,” says Larkin.
“They are phenomenal. They work by engaging with the elements outside such as moving air and shade. As such safes indicate a different interiority located between the outside ‘interior’ and the domestic interior.”
Larkin is one of the most innovative furniture designers currently working in New Zealand, and TheNewDowse Director Tim Walker was impressed by not only the body of work he has created, but also the innovative, collaborative approach he took to this project.
“The proposal builds on the extraordinary investigation of form and material Larkin has been involved in recent years. We were impressed by the collaborative nature of the proposal, incorporating objects, image and text,” says Director Tim Walker.
In total, Larkin will produce six cabinets, as well as text and imagery to accompany the exhibition. The exhibition will be shown at TheNewDowse in 2009
Created in 2006, the Deane Award is a biennial award for decorative arts and design practitioners, and has been established to support and foster the creation of innovative new work. It is generously supported by the Deane Endowment Trust.
The inaugural recipient, jeweller Alan Preston, created a body of work that utilised the stones, shells and natural fabric of New Zealand.
His exhibition Made in Aotearoa has toured to the Hawkes Bay Museum, the Southland Museum and Art Gallery and is currently being exhibited in Invercargill.
If you wish to interview furtniture designer Tim Larkin, or the Director of TheNewDowse Tim Walker, please contact Mandy Herrick on 560 1475, or mandy.herrick@huttcity.govt.nz