Plant Life
Artwork Labels & Didactics

Joris Laarman designer

Dutch 1979–

Joris Laarman Lab, Zaandam design studio

Dutch est. 2004

Ply loop chair

2026

oak veneer, walnut veneer, hemp fibre, Plantics bio-resin, biochar, linseed oil, shellac

Proposed acquisition

Ply loop chair reimagines plywood through the material that has always held it together: glue. Replacing conventional toxic urea-formaldehyde adhesives with Plantics, a plant-based thermoset resin derived from agricultural waste streams, the chair tests how engineered timber might move beyond petrochemical chemistry. Non-toxic, recyclable and biodegradable, Plantics also changes the possibilities of making. Paired with digital design and fabrication, it enables continuous looping forms shaped by material behaviour as much as software. Conceived as experiments in a more symbiotic relationship between nature, culture and technology, the works propose plywood as a system capable of renewal.

Bart Schilder designer

Dutch 1981–

Aifunghi, Enkhuizen design studio

Dutch est. 2025

Growmolding BV, Andijk manufacturer

Dutch est. 2025

Banet lounge chair

2026

mycelium-based composite (hemp fibre, mycelium [Ganoderma lucidum]), Agoprene seaweed-based foam, wool batting, flax and viscose textiles, cotton yarn, mycelium leather label, cedar wood, stainless steel, PHA

Proposed acquisition

Aifunghi’s Banet lounge chair is grown rather than manufactured. Its structural shell is formed from hemp fibres bound by mycelium, the root-like network of fungi, which acts as a natural adhesive as it colonises the substrate inside a mould. The result is a lightweight, load-bearing composite made without synthetic materials or petrochemical binders. The chair’s softness is built up through bio-based foams, natural batting and textile layers, each selected for circularity and end-of-life return. Here furniture is not assembled from inert industrial parts, but cultivated through biological processes shaped by growth, decay and regeneration.

Bart Schilder designer

Dutch 1981–

Aifunghi, Enkhuizen design studio

Dutch est. 2025

Growmolding BV, Andijk manufacturer

Dutch est. 2025

Banet dining chair naked

2025

mycelium-based composite (hemp fibre, mycelium [Ganoderma lucidum])

Proposed acquisition

Producing this dining chair generates approximately five kilograms of carbon dioxide – roughly one seventh of an equivalent plastic chair. The inner core of the chair is composed almost entirely – ninety-four percent by weight – of hemp fibre (the woody core of the plant) fused by mycelium into a rigid shell during cultivation. The remaining six percent is mycelium binder. Once grown, the composite is dried and heat-treated to halt growth; the chair core contains no living fungi. Hemp is a seasonal crop harvested within four months, far shorter than a tree, maximising yield over a production year – while mycelium grows in days. Every component returns to soil at the end of its life.

Bart Schilder designer

Dutch 1981–

Aifunghi, Enkhuizen design studio

Dutch est. 2025

Growmolding BV, Andijk manufacturer

Dutch est. 2025

Bolete side table

2026

mycelium-based composite (hemp fibre, mycelium [Ganoderma lucidum]), fused glass, viscose and flax textiles, aluminium, stainless steel, brass

Campinio pendant lamp

2026

mycelium-based composite (hemp fibre, mycelium [Ganoderma lucidum]), viscose and flax textiles, brass, lighting component

Proposed acquisition

Judith Glover industrial designer

Australian 1969–

Tien Huynh material scientist

Vietnamese 1975–

Mohamad Arekha Bentangan microbiologist

Indonesian 1989–

Alexi Freeman bio-designer

Australian 1978–

Mycelium wildfire jacket

2026

mycelium leather, Tencel, polyester, nylon, PVC and metal components

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria with the support of RMIT University, 2026

While firefighters are among the first human responders to wildfires, fungi are among the first ecological responders, helping to regenerate landscapes through decomposition and nutrient cycling. This jacket explores the potential of fungi-grown materials for protective clothing. The prototype is fabricated from mycelium leather, a biomaterial cultivated from fungal networks using agricultural waste, water and controlled growing conditions. Ongoing material testing is exploring durability, fire resistance, thermal insulation and the material’s capacity to self-extinguish when exposed to flame. The material has achieved OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100 Product Class II certification and has been independently screened for PFAS, formaldehyde, heavy metals and phthalates.

Zeoform, Mullumbimby design studio and manufacturer

Australian est. 2009

Polar shelf

2025

Zeoform Micro Pulp (waste paper, water), aluminium

Zeoform Micro Pulp is made from water and waste paper. When the paper is refined into a nano-pulp and slowly dried at low temperature, the cellulose fibres entangle and form hydrogen bonds. This process requires no additives and produces a material that is fully biodegradable at end of life. As plant-derived cellulose, Zeoform Micro Pulp stores the carbon captured by trees, and can be machined, turned and finished much like hardwood. The Polar shelf uses four vertical moulded tubular legs called ZeoTubes, strong enough to be used as domestic storage.

Aileen Sage designer

Australian est. 2013

mori designer

Australian est. 2021

garigarra designer

Australian est. 2024

Kazu Noguchi Quill designer and maker

Australian est. 2020

Tree family

2026

yarr-warrah (Dharawal) / blackbutt, baaliang (Dharawal) / gariwan (Wiradjuri) / blackwood, moombara (Dharawal) / dahl’wah (D’harawal) / bilawi (Wiradjuri) / casuarina, burringoa (D’harawal) / maranggaal (Wiradjuri) / forest red gum, mugga’go (D’harawal) / baarrimaa (Dharawal) / ironbark, booah (Dharawal) / mahogany, yah-ruigne / boona (Dharawal) / spotted gum, couranga / mudione (Dharawal) / Sydney blue gum, booreeah (Dharawal) / turpentine, gadi / gulgadya (Dharug) / gulgadya / mingo (Dharawal) / binda (Wiradjuri) / grass tree (resin), spirit-soluble dyes

Tree family is a collection of adaptable furniture made for compact and conscious living, created using salvaged and sustainably sourced local timbers from the Sydney region of New South Wales, Australia. Each of the tree species carries cultural, ecological and generational significance. Fine carpentry detailing, colour marking and elevation of the age and imperfections in the wood, aims to remind us that, before becoming doorframes or floorboards, which are then transformed into table legs or stools, these pieces were once living trees. The project tells a story of place, and the longstanding connections between people, communities and trees.

Statement of care from the Tree family project design team

First Languages of this continent have been spoken (and continue to be) for tens of thousands of years. Many First Languages were traditionally oral languages, with knowledges and lore/law carried through speech, song, ceremony and cultural practice.

We acknowledge that English spellings of these words vary, and that different families, communities, language groups and sources may use different spellings. We acknowledge the diversity of language; these variations are deeply respected. Any First Language words included in this piece have been drawn from publicly available sources.

We recognise that local First Languages come first. English translations are used here only as a guide to support readability and do not carry the full meaning, authority or relational context of the language. Authority remains with Country, First Nations Peoples and Language Custodians.

First Languages reference list

Dharawal Language:

Sue Wesson, Murni Dhungang Jirrar: Living in the Illawarra, Hurstville, N.S.W.: National Parks and Wildlife Service, 2005.

Dr Jodi Edwards & Elder Aunty Barb Simms, Dharawal Words, Dharawal Publishing, <https://www.dharawalwords.com.au/plants>.

D’harawal Language:

Frances Bodkin & Lorraine Robertson, D’harawal Climate and Natural Resources, Envirobook, 2013.

Frances Bodkin, Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews & Lorraine Robertson, D’harawal Dreaming Stories, <https://dharawalstories.com/stories/>.

Dharug Language:

State Library of New South Wales, The Dictionary of Sydney, archived 2021, <https://dictionaryofsydney.org/>.

Wiradjuri Language references:

Stan Grant & Dr John Rudder (eds), A New Wiradjuri Dictionary, Restoration House, 2010.

Damien Wright designer and maker

Australian 1969–

5:45pm 18/02/2020 bench seat

2020

polypropylene, red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), copper

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2021, 2021.112

The deep timescales of plant matter and fossil-fuel plastic collide in this monumental bench seat. A shimmering slab of 10,000-year-old river red gum excavated on Yorta Yorta Country forms the work’s ancient spine. Buried for millennia without oxygen, the timber absorbed iron and silica, oxidising into something between wood and fossil. Within it sit mass-produced polypropylene Monobloc chairs. Made from oil and gas, polypropylene is fossil carbon made solid. Cheap, ubiquitous and durable – but not biodegradable – it persists in the environment, fragmenting into microplastics long after the end of its useful life.

Lievore Altherr Molina, Barcelona design studio

Spanish est. 1991

Arper, Monastier di Treviso manufacturer

Italian est. 1989

PaperShell, Tibro material manufacturer

Swedish est. 2021

Catifa Carta PaperShell chair

designed 2001, PaperShell edition designed 2024, manufactured 2026

PaperShell (kraft paper from wood production waste,

bonded with 100% natural resin), powder-coated steel base

Proposed gift

Designed in 2001, the Catifa Carta chair has been reissued in PaperShell, a composite material made from kraft paper derived from wood production waste and bonded with a natural resin. The result is a chair shell with significantly lower embodied carbon than the original fibreglass. PaperShell also retains carbon captured by trees within the material itself. At end of life, PaperShell is designed not for conventional disposal but for pyrolysis, a process that converts the shell into biochar – charcoal made from organic waste that locks carbon into soil. The edition demonstrates how an established industrial form can migrate into a new material system without losing its formal clarity.

Lievore Altherr Molina, Barcelona design studio

Spanish est. 1991

Arper, Monastier di Treviso manufacturer

Italian est. 1989

PaperShell, Tibro material manufacturer

Swedish est. 2021

Catifa Carta PaperShell chair shell

designed 2001, PaperShell edition designed 2024, manufactured 2026

PaperShell (kraft paper from wood production waste, bonded with 100% natural resin)

This partly completed PaperShell chair shell is formed from layers of kraft paper bonded with a bio-resin. Its uncut edges expose the layers of compressed plant fibre beneath the smooth surface of the finished piece. While the moulded shell appears to be almost plastic-like, it is revealed to be composed of a natural material: wood transformed into paper, paper laminated into a strong, load-bearing form.

Frank O. Gehry designer

Canadian 1929–2025

Vitra, Weil am Rhein manufacturer

German est. 1950

Wiggle side chair

designed 1972, manufactured 2001

cardboard, composition board

Presented through the NGV Foundation by Rae Rothfield, Fellow, 2003, 2003.492

Frank Gehry’s Wiggle side chair transforms cardboard, produced from wood pulp, into sculptural furniture. Made from laminated corrugated cardboard and fibreboard, the chair belongs to Gehry’s 1972 Easy Edges series, which gave structural force and formal elegance to a material usually associated with packaging and disposability. The chair’s sinuous profile demonstrates the strength produced by layering and corrugation, transforming tree fibre into an engineered material capable of carrying weight, holding form and challenging assumptions about permanence, value and everyday materials.

Oki Sato designer

Canadian Japanese 1977–

Nendo, Tokyo design studio

Japanese est. 2002

Cabbage chair (mixed)

2008

fabric, paper, resin

Suzanne Dawbarn Bequest, 2018, 2017.1252

Cabbage chair was made in response to the waste created by the luxury fashion industry. Known for his pleated clothing, Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake asked Oki Sato to design a furniture piece from the pleated paper produced in mass quantities – usually abandoned as an unwanted by-product – during the process of making pleated fabric. Finding a new use for this waste material, Sato transformed a roll of pleated paper into a small chair that reveals itself when peeled back one layer at a time.

Christien Meindertsma designer

Dutch 1980–

Label/Breed, Amsterdam manufacturer

Dutch est. 2005

Flax chair

designed 2015, manufactured 2017

flax fibre (Linum usitatissimum), polylactic acid

Purchased with funds donated by Gordon Moffatt AM, 2018, 2017.1218

Flax chair demonstrates how new plant-based production processes can both pay homage to cultural practices and revitalise local industries. Made from a new composite material combining woven flax textile (linen) with an organic biodegradable plastic, the chair provides a novel use for flax, the fibre historically used to produce cloth linen in the Netherlands. With the majority of Dutch flax now exported to Asia for production in large-scale textile factories, this project offers a scalable, sustainable and locally made product designed to reinvigorate Dutch manufacturing.

Alvar Aalto designer

Finnish 1898–1976

Formafantasma, Milan/Rotterdam design studio

Italian/Dutch est. 2009

Artek manufacturer

Finnish est. 1935

Stool 60

from the Forest collection 2023

designed 1933, manufactured 2023, 2025

wild birch solid wood, birch plywood, birch veneer

Proposed gift

The innovation of the Forest collection lies in its recalibration of what industrial design permits. Rather than altering Alvar Aalto’s familiar forms, Formafantasma shifts attention to the material standards that have shaped their production. The collection is primarily made from ‘wild birch’, timber that incorporates knots, insect marks, darker staining, bark traces and core wood – features that are typically excluded from Artek’s and other furniture manufacturing. These irregularities highlight the life of the tree, rather than concealing it beneath ideals of uniformity. The collection reduces forest waste by allowing more of each tree to enter production, rethinking modernism’s commitment to standardisation through a more accountable relationship to the forest.

Alvar Aalto designer

Finnish 1898–1976

Formafantasma, Milan/Rotterdam design studio

Italian/Dutch est. 2009

Artek manufacturer

Finnish est. 1935

Chair 66

from the Forest collection 2023

designed 1935, manufactured 2023, 2025

wild birch solid wood, birch plywood, birch veneer

Bench 153B

from the Forest collection 2023

designed 1945, manufactured 2023, 2025

wild birch solid wood, birch plywood, birch veneer

Proposed gift

Modernism’s great promise was to make good design available to many through light, strong, affordable objects produced using industrial systems and standardised forms. Plywood was central to that ambition. In Alvar Aalto’s furniture, the low-cost material could be bent and laminated to create high-quality furniture at scale, bringing the warmth of wood into the language of mass production. Modernism’s democratic ideals were also bound to ideas of material abundance, industrial efficiency and visual uniformity. Today, however, it is difficult to separate those ideas from the twenty-first century concerns of deforestation, mineral extraction and industrial waste. When encountering modernist objects, we must question how they were designed and what systems made them possible.

Peter Hiort-Lorenzen designer

Danish 1943–

Johannes Foersom designer

Danish 1947–

Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen design studio

Danish est. 1977

Normann Copenhagen manufacturer

Danish est. 1999

Mat collection of plant-based chairs

– Hemp

2023

hemp, powder-coated steel

Mat collection of plant-based chairs

– Seaweed

2023

hemp, eelgrass, powder-coated steel

Proposed acquisition

These chair collections are both named Mat – short for materials. The shell of each chair is formed from hemp stems, the woody stalk of the plant, a by-product of cultivation once fibre and seed have been extracted for textiles and food. Compressed with a recyclable binder, the stems replace injection-moulded plastic without synthetic chemistry. The seaweed version adds eelgrass harvested from the Danish coastline, giving the shell a darker tone. All Mat chairs are designed for disassembly and can be recycled. Designers Johannes Foersom and Peter Hiort-Lorenzen began exploring plant fibre as a substitute for plastic in the late 1990s. These chairs are the result of more than twenty years of that research.

Jordi Sánchez Forés designer

Spanish 1990–

Luchi Alfonso Mannucci designer

Costa Rican 1992–

Avant Mater, Byron Bay design studio and manufacturer

Australian est. 2025

MACA trays and vessels

2026

macadamia shell, bio-resin, stainless steel

Each year New South Wales’s Northern Rivers region produces around eighty percent of Australia’s macadamia crop, and with it, thousands of tonnes of discarded shells. Agricultural waste streams such as this are an increasing focus of materials research, as industries look for value in by-products once deemed useless. Avant Mater mills the shells and sieves them by size, blending them with a bio-based resin to create a pourable mixture that can be cast into moulds, before it cures into a dense, stone-like material called MACA. The bio-resin allows a waste material with no inherent structure to become load-bearing and durable. The surface of MACA retains the shell’s own texture and tonal variation, leaving a visible record of material origins.

Crafting Plastics!, Bratislava design studio

Slovakian est. 2016

Vlasta Kubušová co-founder and lead designer

Slovakian 1989–

Miroslav Král co-founder and lead designer

Slovakian 1986–

Juraj Olejár, Soňa Otiepková, Lukáš Gál, Martina Bajteková, Radka Knezovičová research and design team

Sensbiom 2.1

designed 2023, manufactured 2026

Nuatan® biopolymer with UV bioskin

An independent continuation of the Sensbiom project by Crafting Plastics! and DumoLab Research, founded by Laia Mogas-Soldevila

Plant matter does not merely absorb light; it responds to it. Born from this premise, Sensbiom 2.1 is a collection of biopolymer lattices that change colour in real time in response to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Conceived as modular architectural elements, such as partitions or light-filtering surfaces, the lattices translate imperceptible environmental conditions into visible warning signals. Invisible to the human eye yet damaging to all living things, UV radiation is increasing globally as fossil-fuel burning accelerates climate change. Just as plants have evolved photosensitive responses to UV over millions of years, designed materials might do the same.

Kate Scardifield artist

Australian 1985–

Urgent is the rhythm

2022

biomasonry composite from algae biomass and oyster-shell waste

Developed in collaboration with the C3 Institute (Climate Change Cluster) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Technology Sydney, Pacific Bio Australia and Appellation Oysters

This work focuses on algae, one of the most promising materials of the post-fossil-fuel design era. Fast-growing and able to absorb carbon as it grows, algae and seaweed are being explored for everything from bioplastics to building materials. In Urgent is the rhythm, more than a tonne of algae biomass, intercepted from aquaculture industries in New South Wales and Queensland, is combined with oyster-shell waste to form heavy, interlocking biomasonry blocks. The work imagines a future in which farmed algae is cultivated not only for food or water purification, but also as a raw material for manufacturing, design and architecture.

Kate Scardifield artist

Australian 1985–

Edition Office, Melbourne architecture studio

Australia est. 2016

Urgent is the rhythm

2026

digital images of biomasonry architecture (renders)

Edition Office’s speculative architectural drawings show what buildings made from plant matter might look like. In the not-too-distant future, it will be possible for algae to be cultivated at vast agricultural scale and processed into blocks, tiles, facade panels and other construction elements, storing carbon in the fabric of construction. Kate Scardifield and Edition Office have collaborated to visualise structures whose walls are formed from farmed biological matter that actively removes carbon while it is growing.

EAST Architecture Studio architecture studio

Lebanese Emirati est. 2015

Nicolas Fayad principal architect

Lebanese 1985–

Charles Kettaneh principal architect

Lebanese American 1984–

AKT II, London structural engineers

English est. 1996

Rayyane Tabet artist

Lebanese American 1983–

Remarkable FZE fabricator

Saudi Arabian est. 2006

On Weaving stool

2025

date palm waste composite

Commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation for the inaugural AlMusalla Prize, presented at the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025.

Proposed gift

On Weaving is a bio-regional architecture project that looks at date palm waste in Saudi Arabia as a design and construction material. Each year fronds are pruned from date palms and regularly burned in open fields. More than 140 million date palms globally generate approximately 48.8 million tonnes of pruning waste each year. Created from date palm waste, the On Weaving stool demonstrates that this waste stream is already a viable construction and design material, and one capable of meeting the requirements of sacred space. Winner of the inaugural AlMusalla Prize, the project was developed for the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

EAST Architecture Studio architecture studio

Lebanese Emirati est. 2015

Nicolas Fayad principal architect

Lebanese 1985–

Charles Kettaneh principal architect

Lebanese American 1984–

Sleysla fabricator

Saudi Arabian est. 2010

On Weaving prayer mat

2025

date palm leaf, natural dye (madder)

Commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation for the inaugural AlMusalla Prize, presented at the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025.

Proposed gift

Across the Middle East and North Africa region, date palms provide shade, food, shelter and fibres for weaving. Drawing on this local material, the On Weaving prayer mat translates EAST Architecture Studio’s On Weaving project into an intimate devotional surface. The mat brings together craft, ornament and structure to extend the project’s use of date palm waste into a tactile object of prayer.

EAST Architecture Studio architecture studio

Lebanese Emirati est. 2015

Nicolas Fayad principal architect

Lebanese 1985–

Charles Kettaneh principal architect

Lebanese American 1984–

AKT II, London structural engineers

English est. 1996

Rayyane Tabet artist

Lebanese American 1983–

On Weaving architectural drawings

2024

digital files

Commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation for the inaugural AlMusalla Prize, presented at the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025.

Proposed gift

These architectural drawings present On Weaving as a contemporary interpretation of the musalla, an open or semi-enclosed ephemeral space for Muslim prayer. Rather than a permanent mosque, the musalla is temporary or mobile, defined by orientation, ground, threshold and collective gathering. EAST Architecture Studio translates these principles through a modular structure that resembles a loom, with frames, screens and woven surfaces made from date palm waste, a regional agricultural by-product. Plans, sections and axonometric views reveal architecture conceived as both structure and textile, whereby pattern, shade and enclosure form a temporary space for devotion.

Edward Linacre Studio, Melbourne design studio

Australian est. 2021

Edward Linacre designer

Australian 1983–

Indigo Tolhurst, Gabrielle Nehrybecki lead papermakers

100RCP in ‘Natural Skin’

2026

100% recycled paper, cellulose fibres

Composed of reclaimed cellulose fibres, 100RCP is a ceiling tile for interior fit-outs developed through research into materials derived from 100 percent recycled paper. By retaining the carbon stored within paper fibres and diverting valuable resources from landfill, 100RCP reduces the environmental impact of construction while demonstrating the potential of waste as a material resource for architecture and interior projects. Office and retail interiors often have short life spans due to tenancy and branding changes. This product has the potential to reduce the impact of ‘churn’, a term used to describe the constant change within the commercial real estate marketplace.

Lơ Silk fashion house

Vietnamese est. 2016

Traditional áo dài and trousers

2026

Lãnh Mỹ A black silk

Commissioned by RMIT University Vietnam, 2026

The áo dài is one of Vietnam’s most recognisable garments, closely associated with feminine dress, ceremony and national identity. This traditional áo dài and accompanying trousers are made from Lãnh Mỹ A, a rare black silk textile associated with the town Tân Châu in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region. Historically a symbol of prosperity and refinement honoured through formal and ceremonial wear, Lãnh Mỹ A is still recognised for its deep colour, fluid drape and lustrous surface. In this garment, the textile pays tribute to the form through which Vietnamese silk has long been worn, valued and remembered.

RMIT Vietnam (The Vietnam Design Research Studio) producer

Australian est. 2000

Donna Cleveland research lead and producer

Australian 1975–

Tri Le Media film production and video editing

Vietnamese est. 2015

Black by Nature Lãnh Mỹ A Silk

2026

colour digital video, 5 min 4 sec

Commissioned by RMIT University Vietnam, 2026. With thanks to Lơ Silk and Hanoia for archival footage

This film documents the plant-based dyeing process that gives Lãnh Mỹ A its distinctive black surface. In the Vietnamese town Tân Châu, the silk is repeatedly worked with mặc nưa, the fruit of the Diospyros mollis tree, whose resin darkens through oxidation. The cloth is immersed in mặc nưa resin, sun-dried, rinsed in Mekong River water, washed and beaten repeatedly to deepen its colour and bring out its lustre. The film records a living material practice that is shaped by the seasons, the river, plant chemistry and tacit knowledge.

JAPANESE

Yukata with frogs

Meiji period, 1868–1912

cotton, indigo dye, shibori

Purchased with funds donated by Jan Bagley and Bruce Herbes, 2025, 2025.54

Indigo is one of the oldest dyes in the world. Extracted from the leaves of Indigofera tinctoria and related species, it has been cultivated and traded across Asia, Africa and the Americas for thousands of years. In Japan, indigo dyeing, known as aizome, developed into one of the most sophisticated plant-based colour traditions in the history of textiles, the dye vat itself a living bacterial culture, maintained daily. The deep blue of this yukata is the result of repeated immersion and oxidation, the colour building with each pass through the vat. The pattern is created using shibori resist techniques – binding and gathering the cotton so that the undyed areas become the image.

New acquisition

KOREAN

Irregular check pojagi wrapping cloth

early 20th century

hemp

Purchased NGV Foundation, 2019, 2019.611

For centuries, Korean people have wrapped objects to protect the item’s good fortune, or pok. Wrapping cloths, pojagi, originated in the Joseon court (14th – 19th century) and were used to wrap gifts, store or carry important items, and sometimes to cover food. This is a chogak-po pojagi, constructed by sewing together irregularly shaped fabric sections with heavy silk seams to create one large square piece of cloth. This simple, undecorated example is made with sewing offcuts or scraps of the plant-based textile hemp. Known as min-po, such wrappings were produced and used by the middle classes, as opposed to kungpo, pojagi that were decorated with embroidery and used by members of the court.

CHINESE

Man’s bamboo underjacket

19th century

bamboo, cotton, cotton thread

Purchased, 2004, 2004.77

Bamboo clothing is often presented as a contemporary innovation. This undergarment is a reminder that it is not. Bamboo undergarments were worn in China from at least the Ming dynasty, more than four centuries before the material was marketed as eco-friendly fashion. The jacket is made not from processed bamboo fibre, but from cut sections of hollow bamboo stem sewn together into a woven mesh. The result is simple and functional: a lightweight, breathable layer that cools in hot, humid climates and protects expensive outer garments from sweat. The carefully constructed mesh pattern, blue trim and fasteners give elegant form to practical considerations.

Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne production studio

Australian est. 1976

Heather Thomas textile artist

Australian 1977–

Set of 37 Eucalyptus-dyed, Border Leicester x Merino woollen yarns

2026

Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum and iron; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum and iron; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum and iron; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum and iron; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum and iron; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum and iron; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, alum; Argyle apple, Eucalyptus cinerea, no mordant; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and copper; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and iron; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and iron; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and iron; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and iron; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and iron; Narrow-leaved peppermint (Eucalyptus radiata), alum and iron; silver wattle (Acacia dealbata), alum; silver wattle (Acacia dealbata), alum

These thirty-seven yarns were made with three Australian native plants, sourced within one hundred kilometres of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Through an investigation into plant-based dyes, the Australian Tapestry Workshop produced these yarns for their tapestry production. This palette demonstrates the range of colours that can be made from local plants, spanning deep terracotta through to yellow, grey and near-black. A skilled technician manipulates the process to achieve different outcomes, shifting the type of mordant used, the length of time the yarn is immersed in dye, and the sequence of dyeing. Mineral mordants such as alum, iron and copper shift the same plant extract into entirely different colour registers, as demonstrated through these samples.

Fernando Laposse designer

Mexican 1988–

Resting place daybed

2023

from the Conflict Avocados project 2023

avocado-dyed cotton, plywood, composition board,

other materials

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased with funds donated by The Andrew and Geraldine Buxton Foundation, 2023, 2024.159.a-d

Resting place memorialises the activist Homero Gómez González, whose murder was tied to his work protecting the habitat of the monarch butterfly from illegal logging to clear land for avocado farming. Embellished with small, embroidered symbols, the patchwork represents an act of repair, and the designer’s desire to contribute to healing the violence and devastation associated with the avocado. There is a belief in the Mexican state of Michoacán that monarch butterflies are the visiting souls of deceased relatives because their migratory patterns coincide with the Mexican Day of the Dead. As such, the pink avocado-dyed fabric is accompanied by yellow fabric dyed using marigolds, the traditional flowers of the Day of the Dead.

Fernando Laposse designer

Mexican 1988–

The avocado legacy

2023

from the Conflict Avocados project 2023

colour digital video, sound, 40 min

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased with funds donated by The Andrew and Geraldine Buxton Foundation, 2023, 2024.155

This video features interviews with biologists, women from Cherán, rangers from the El Rosario monarch butterfly sanctuary, and human rights activists. They describe how people are actively resisting the damage being inflicted upon the culture and environment in Mexico by the avocado trade. Tracing the supply chain from farming and harvesting to export and consumption, the film forces viewers to confront their role as consumers who drive global demand for avocados, highlighting that the injustices resulting from the avocado trade are not just isolated to Mexico. Homero Gómez González, who is interviewed in the film, was found dead on 29 January 2020, after a two-week disappearance.

Anton Gerner designer and maker

Australian 1970–

Tree cabinet

2025

ebonised red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), poplar

plywood (Populus sp.), elm (Ulmus sp.), maple plywood

(Acer sp.), brass

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2025, 2025.664

Veneering is among the oldest techniques for making rare wood go further. Ancient Egyptians, facing deforestation in the Nile Valley, developed tools to slice imported timber into thin sheets. Pliny the Elder described veneer as a means of making a single tree serve many. The technique has been the foundation of luxury furniture ever since, and Anton Gerner’s Tree cabinet reveals that history. The three millimetre burr elm on its surface was salvaged from English trees felled in the great storm of 1987. The burr elm has been book-matched from a single trunk’s cross-section to reconstruct the tree’s original form against a background of ebonised Australian red gum.

New acquisition

ENGLISH

English guitar (cittern)

c. 1770

maple (Acer sp.), mother-of-pearl, ivory, metal, gut, ebony (Diospyros sp.), spruce

Purchased, 1908, 820-D2

This eighteenth-century English musical instrument assembles materials from across the known world at the time: ebony from the forests of Central Africa or South Asia, elephant ivory for the tuning pegs, shell harvested from tropical waters, timber from European forests. Each element would have been chosen for its beauty and rarity, and the status those properties conferred. The object can be read as a record of colonial extraction that continues today. International ivory trade was banned in 1989 but continues illegally. Ebony is now listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but is still logged from the same forests that provided the timber for this instrument over two hundred years ago.

Afra Scarpa designer

Italian 1937–

Tobia Scarpa designer

Italian 1935–

B&B Italia manufacturer

Italian est. 1966

Artona chair

1975

walnut (Juglans sp.), ebony (Diospyros sp.), leather,

other materials

Gift of B&B Italia (Maxalto) & Design 250 Pty Ltd, 1976, D78-1976

The chair is made from walnut and ebony: one a managed European timber, one among the most ecologically costly materials in the history of design. Ebony trees take up to two hundred years to reach maturity. By the mid twentieth century, when the chair was made, demand from furniture, instrument and luxury goods manufacturers had already pushed multiple species to endangered status. Several types of ebony are now listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna And Flora as species that could be threatened if trade is not regulated. Estimates suggest that between ten and thirty percent of all traded timber globally has been illegally logged, with ebony among the most trafficked.

Industry Facility, London design studio

English est. 2002

Ishinomaki Laboratory, Ishinomaki manufacturer

Japanese est. 2011

Hiroi chair

designed 2022, manufactured 2024

noto hiba (cedar), steel pipe

Proposed gift

Ishinomaki Laboratory was founded on 11 March 2011 – the day the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. In the wreckage of the city of Ishinomaki, people began making what they needed with what was at hand. That spirit of resourcefulness has shaped each object the laboratory has produced since. The Hiroi chair is made from noto hiba, a cedar native to the Noto Peninsula and one of Japan’s most revered building timbers, long prized for its durability, fragrance and resistance to moisture. It is the traditional base wood of Wajima lacquerware. In January 2024 – the year this chair was manufactured – a magnitude 7.5 earthquake devastated the Noto Peninsula. The wood in this chair carries the history of a place still recovering.

India Mahdavi designer

Iranian 1962–

Vanille chair

2018

rattan, fabric, lacquered finish

Purchased NGV Foundation, 2024, 2024.16

Rattan furniture has decorated the world for centuries. Indigenous communities across South-East Asia harvested the plant for its fibres long before European traders brought it west in the nineteenth century. In the Western world it became a marker of exotic refinement – and a material whose origins were rarely examined. Rattan is a climbing palm, not a tree, reaching maturity in five to seven years. It can be harvested without killing the plant, and is fully biodegradable. India Mahdavi worked with the properties of the plant to create this chair, rattan’s natural pliability determining the curves. Here form follows material, rather than overriding it.

Tejo Remy designer

Dutch 1960–

René Veenhuizen designer

Dutch 1968–

Atelier Remy & Veenhuizen, Utrecht design studio

Dutch est. 2000

Bamboo chair

designed 2007, manufactured 2023

bamboo

Purchased with funds donated by Gordon Moffatt AM, 2024, 2024.152

Bamboo is not a tree but a grass – a distinction that matters in terms of sustainability. While many tropical hardwoods take centuries to reach maturity, bamboo does so in three to seven years. It sequesters carbon at rates higher than most timber forests and regenerates from the same root system after it has been harvested. This chair was originally designed to demonstrate the potential of laminated bamboo, created from strips bent, layered and bonded into form. Today, bio-based resins are beginning to replace the petrochemical adhesives that laminated timber. As that transition continues, a chair like this becomes something close to a genuinely closed-loop object.

Ray Eames designer

American 1912–88

Charles Eames designer

American 1907–78

Evans Products Company, Michigan manufacturer

American 1928–62

Leg splint

1943

mahogany (Swietenia sp.), moulded plywood

Purchased, NGV Supporters of Decorative Arts, 2021, 2021.14

Seminal postwar architect-designers Ray and Charles Eames came to moulded plywood through wartime necessity: a brief from the US Navy for a lighter, stronger alternative to metal leg splints. The result is one of the most iconic objects in the history of modernism. It is also a reminder that even the most celebrated designers rarely interrogated the full material systems their work depended on. The use of cheap – yet toxic – urea-formaldehyde (UF) resins to bond the plywood went unremarked upon at the time. Across a century of MDF, plywood and particleboard production, the use of UF would become one of the most pervasive indoor air quality problems associated with the modern interior. Such resins also rendered the material neither recyclable nor compostable.

Gebrüder Thonet, Vienna manufacturer

Austrian est. 1849

Side chair

c. 1880

beech (Fagus sp.) bentwood, cane, iron

Gift of the Blakeley family in memory of William Henry Blakeley, 2012, 2012.91

Steam-bent without a single joint and shipped flat-packed to every continent, Gebrüder Thonet’s Side chair was the first mass-produced piece of timber furniture. This innovative product worked with the wood’s properties, bending with the grain rather than cutting against it, producing a modern object at industrial scale. This marriage of design ingenuity, machine production and global distribution paved the way for a future in which democratic design and forest extraction expanded together. When Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943, he was building on a model Thonet had established a century earlier. The flat-pack furniture now filling the world’s homes began here.

Mark Lilly designer and maker

English 1987–, Australia 2018–

Banksia chair

2024

Banksia grandis seed pods, Victorian ash

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2026, 2026.199

Endemic to south-west Western Australia, the giant banksia produces large, dense seed pods that fall from the plant after opening. These abundant, renewable seed pods are largely overlooked as a material resource. With native timber logging banned in Western Australia since January 2024, Mark Lilly turns to what the landscape offers freely to create this chair. Each seed pod is lathe-turned and joined to form the chair’s structure, a process that reveals the pod’s grain, as well as its structural potential. The result proposes a new material language for Australian furniture: not logged, not milled, but gathered.

New acquisition

Broached Commissions, Melbourne design studio

Australian est. 2010

John Warwicker pattern designer

English 1955–

Woodcraft Mobiliar, Melbourne manufacturer

Australian est. 2009

Broached recall medium monolith (mahogany and coco burl)

2021

mahogany (Swietenia sp.) veneer, coco burl veneer, plywood, patinated steel, earth magnets

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2021, 2021.548

The veneers on this cabinet are a record of extraction. Sourced from the archive of Melbourne supplier Elton Group, they document a century of global timber trade, from the harvesting of tropical hardwoods in the 1930s to the rise of modernism and its mass-produced wood products. Symbols of refinement, mahogany and coco burl were the prestige surfaces of the modern interior. The grid that orders this cabinet’s surface is no coincidence. Modernism organised the world through the rational idea of the ‘grid’, which structured everything from cities to factory floors to domestic interiors. It also informed the way that forests were stripped of their natural resources. This cabinet aims to make that cost visible.

Maddalena Casadei designer

Italian 1976–

Pretziada, Sardinia design studio

Italian est. 2016

Falegnameria Pisu, Cagliari, Sardinia manufacturer

Italian est. 1970

Accanta teacup table

designed 2021, manufactured 2026

Sardinian cork (Quercus suber)

Proposed acquisition

The Accanta teacup table takes its name from the Sardinian word for ‘nearby’, a nod to its portability as well as the local material from which it is made. Designer Maddalena Casadei was inspired by the bankitu de ortigu, a traditional Sardinian stool historically carried by shepherds and olive harvesters and made by layering raw cork bark. Cork has been harvested in Sardinia for centuries using a renewable method that strips the bark without felling the tree, allowing each tree to regenerate and be harvested again on average every nine years. For the table, Casadei worked with the family workshop Falegnameria Pisu to produce extra-dense compressed cork blocks that are left entirely natural – no lacquer, no varnish.

Julie Gough artist

Trawlwoolway 1965–

Kelp water carrier

2004

bull kelp (Durvillaea potatorum), reed, wood

Gift of the artist, 2005, 2005.401

Bull kelp is among the most structurally resilient plants in the ocean. Anchored to exposed rocky reefs, its dark, leathery fronds withstand swells that would destroy most living things. It is also rich in alginates, natural compounds now being researched as bio-based alternatives to synthetic polymers, with applications across medicine, packaging and materials design. The knowledge of how to select, prepare and form this type of kelp into vessels for carrying water and food was held by Tasmanian Aboriginal people and nearly ended by colonial dispossession. Julie Gough’s work is evidence of the continuity of this tradition. Bull kelp connects the oldest material knowledge on this continent to the frontier of what comes next.

JAPANESE

Set of ten bowls and small dishes (Wan chatsu jyukkyaku)

19th century

lacquer on wood

Presented by Sir Roderick Carnegie AC through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, 2014, 2014.2310

Urushi lacquer is made from the sap of a single urushi tree, Toxicodendron vernicifluum, harvested by making fine incisions in the bark, yielding only a few grams at a time. A tree takes ten years to reach harvest maturity and yields, across its entire life, only around 180 grams (one cup) of sap. The urushi forest is itself a cultivated relationship: artisans plant, tend and manage the trees across generations, and the trees give their sap in return. These bowls are made in the Negoro tradition whereby red lacquer is applied over black, resulting in objects whose beauty deepens with use as the layers wear away over time.

Suganuma Michiko designer

Japanese 1940–

Bamboo root water container

Shōwa period 1926–89

lacquer on bamboo

Purchased with funds donated by Baillieu Myer AC and Sarah Myer, 2016, 2016.411.a-b

This container combines two plant products into one object. The form is bamboo root that is neither carved nor processed but ‘followed’ with lacquer embellishing the root’s natural surface. The lacquer itself is made from the sap of the urushi tree, built up in layers, each one dried and polished before the next can begin. Bamboo is among the fastest growing plants on earth, while the urushi tree takes a decade to yield its first harvestable sap. Suganuma Michiko’s practice brings these two timelines together. The Japanese lacquer tradition understands time as a material. In this object, slowness and speed converge.

INDIAN

Sikki grass container

late 20th century

sikki grass, natural pigments

Gift of Alexandra and Leigh Copeland, 2021, 2021.827

Sikki grass grows in the marshy floodplains of the Kosi, Gandak and Kamala rivers in the north-eastern Indian state of Bihar. During the monsoon season, when its stems reach their full height, it is harvested. Only the flowering tops are taken, with the deep, fibrous roots left intact to bind the riverbank soil. The grass is boiled, sun-dried, split into fine strands and woven using fingers and a single small metal tool. This is almost entirely a women’s craft, transmitted from mother to daughter across generations and traditionally practised by brides-to-be as part of wedding preparations. The containers woven from sikki grass have been made in the region of Madhubani for more than two thousand years.

Martin Corbin designer and maker

English 1949–2015, worked in Australia 1981–2015

Set of spoons

c. 1984

she-oak (Casuarina sp.), flame oak (Stenocarpus sinuatus), almond wood (Prunus amygdalus), beefwood (Grevillea striata), bracelet honey myrtle (Melaleuca armillaris), mulga (Acacia aneura), black myrtle (Baeckea sp.), grey mangrove (Avicennia marina), coastal bead heath (Erica sp.), black tea tree (Melaleuca sp.), olive (Olea europaea), myall (Acacia pendula), myrtle beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii), blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), red locust (Robinia sp.), red cedar (Toona ciliata), Broughton willow (Acacia salicina), Blakely’s red gum (Eucalyptus blakelyi), wilga (Geijera parviflora), banksia (Banksia sp.), brown hazelwood (Lysicarpus augustifolius), ebony (Diospyros sp.), macadamia (Macadamia sp.), purpleheart (Peltogyne paniculata), river she-oak (Casuarina cunninghamiana)

Purchased, 1985, D6.a-y-1985

Spoons are among the earliest objects made by humans. To carve one well you need to know a tree – its hardness, its grain, the way it responds to a blade. Born in England, Martin Corbin arrived in Australia in 1981 and spent years familiarising himself with the twenty-five timbers that comprise this set of spoons. These trees are deeply significant in First Nations material culture, which is shaped by knowledge systems tens of thousands of years older than the Western craft tradition Corbin worked within. Together, these spoons sit at the threshold between extraction and knowledge. They ask, quietly, what it means to work with a country’s trees.

JAPANESE

Tea whisk

20th century

bamboo, cotton thread

Felton Bequest, 1927, 2868C-D3

The chasen, or tea whisk, is one of the most refined objects in the history of craft. Cut from a single piece of bamboo, it features tines that are split, shaped and curved by hand – a process requiring years of accumulated skill. The whisk is used to prepare matcha in the Japanese tea ceremony, a practice that understands slowness, material attentiveness and the relationship between maker, object and user as inseparable. Bamboo’s combination of strength, flexibility and fine grain makes it uniquely suited to this purpose. Whisks made of bamboo are also quiet and do not scratch cups or bowls. People have been making everyday objects from bamboo for thousands of years, and no other material has yet replaced it.

Julia Manheim artist

English 1949–

Bangle

1977

ebony (Diospyros sp.)

Purchased, 1977, D333-1977

In 1977, when Julia Manheim carved this bangle, ebony was what it had always been in the European decorative tradition: a prestige material, prized for its density and its deep black colour, which can be polished to a fine lustre. From ancient Egyptian tomb objects and Renaissance cabinetry to eighteenth-century instruments and beyond, there has been a continuous appetite for this slow-growing tropical tree that could not replenish itself at the rate it was logged. Manheim would later become one of Britain’s leading advocates for sustainable jewellery practice, writing the field’s defining handbook on working with discarded and non-extractive materials.

Aunty Kim Wandin artist

Wurundjeri/Woi-Wurrung 1958–

Iuk bagurrk gunga

2023

flax (Linum sp.)

Gift of the artist, 2023, 2023.629

This woven eel trap binds together plant knowledge, ecological knowledge and weaving knowledge into a single useful object. The short-finned eel, known as iuk in Woi-Wurrung language, has sustained Wurundjeri people along the Birrarung and its tributaries for millennia. Iuk were captured using woven traps, a design technology requiring precise knowledge of waterways, seasons, plant materials and weaving techniques. Across south-eastern Australia, First Nations eel management systems are among the oldest aquaculture practices on earth. One World Heritage-listed trap system at Budj Bim on Gunditjmara Country in western Victoria has been carbon dated as 6600 years old.

Chris Wolston designer

American 1987–

Nalgona chair 05

designed 2019, manufactured 2021

yaré (Heteropsis sp.), willow (Salix sp.), painted steel, cork

Purchased with funds donated by Gordon Moffatt AM, 2022, 2022.151

Yaré is a vine found in the Colombian Amazon. It is hemiepiphytic, meaning that it germinates high in the forest canopy, then sends aerial roots down to the ground below. It is these strong, flexible roots that are harvested by Amazonian indigenous communities, who have used them for construction, basketry and animal traps for generations. Commercial demand for the fibre has grown significantly, raising questions about sustainable extraction that ethical sourcing practices are beginning to address. Chris Wolston works with Colombian craftspeople to weave yaré into anthropomorphic forms. The vine’s capacity to curve and hold shape is what makes the figure possible.

Marep Pamle art collective

Meriam Mir est. 2019

Robert Meddy Kaigey designer and artist

Meriam Mir 1947–

James Blanco designer and artist

Meriam Mir 1988–

Helen Dick designer and artist

Meriam Mir 1956–

John Tabo designer and artist

Meriam Mir 1985–

Koki, cabinet

2019

bamboo (Bambusa vulgaris), poplar plywood (Populus sp.), synthetic polymer paint, seeds

Purchased NGV Foundation, 2020, 2020.113.a-b

Mer, also known as Murray Island, sits at the eastern edge of the Torres Strait, at the northernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The island is home to a native species of bamboo known in Meriam Mir language as marep. Elsewhere in this exhibition, bamboo is discussed as a global material with significant artisanal, industrial and biomaterial potential. Here, however, it is something more specific: a plant that belongs to a place, with a community that belongs to it.

Walter Brooks designer and artist

Tiwi 1994–

169-25 Wangatunga jirtaka jilamara (Tunga)

2026

locally sourced ochres on stringybark

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2026, 2026.225

Waterproof, lightweight and made entirely from what the environment provides, the bark bag is one of humanity’s oldest functional designs. The tunga is its Tiwi form: stringybark folded and painted with ceremonial earth-pigment designs known as Jilamara. Tunga are both functional and ceremonial. Once used to hold water, food and children, tunga also feature in Pukumani mourning ceremony, where they are placed over tutini, funerary poles, as gifts for the deceased. Walter Brooks learned to make tunga from senior Tiwi artists, with this one being a contemporary act of making within a continuing relationship with Country.

New acquisition

Morovi

Papua New Guinean active 1990s

Kakame figure

c. 1991

earth pigments on wood, fibre rope

Presented through the NGV Foundation by Ed and Alice-Anne Boylan, Fellows, 2004, 2004.351

This figure is connected to the most powerful spirit of the Gulf of Papua region. It has a public name – Kakame – and a second name, known only to elders and kept from general knowledge. Housed in the venai, the initiated men’s longhouse, figures such as this one mediate between the elders and Kakame. Through this figure, elders learn when to plant, when to trade, when to go to war. In return, food is placed at its feet. Carved from wood, the zoomorphic form retains the shape of the original branch – the plant or tree is not seen as a raw material. It is already in relationship with the people who use it.

Mozhdeh Matin designer

Peruvian Iranian 1987–

Mozh Mozh design studio

Peruvian est. 2008

Ecotono shiringa bio-leather jacket

2024

shiringa bio-leather (natural rubber latex on cotton)

Shiringa is the Amazonian name for Hevea brasiliensis, the rubber tree. The method used to extract rubber is ancestral knowledge: shallow cuts are made in the bark to collect milky sap, which is then applied to cotton and dried or smoked into a waterproof material. Since 2018 Mozhdeh Matin has worked with communities in the Amazon who are guardians of shiringa forests, developing a plant-based leather range to create an ethical economic opportunity for indigenous villagers. This jacket is traceable to a specific forest, a specific community and a specific decision about what fashion’s relationship to the Amazon could look like.

Emma Håkansson director and producer

Australian Swedish 1999–

Collective Fashion Justice production studio

Australian est. 2020

SHIRINGA: Fashion Regenerating Amazonia

2025

documentary film, 12 min, looped

Emma Håkansson’s documentary follows the Awajún people of the Peruvian Amazon, who tap shiringa (rubber trees) using traditional methods to produce plant-based leather. According to Caxacori Studio, which partners with the local community to produce the material, fifty-nine Awajún families in the Tuntanain Communal Reserve earn income from the forest – a protected area of nearly 95,000 hectares in northern Peru – without cutting it down. The film argues that a plant-based material economy is not only an ecological solution but also an economic and political one: the communities who have stewarded these forests across generations are the primary beneficiaries of what those forests produce. The jacket displayed nearby was a product of this relationship.

Rita Minga designer and artist

Wangkajunga c. 1935–

Johnny Nargoodah designer and artist

Nykina/Walmajarri 1959–

Trent Jansen designer

Australian 1981–

Gene Tighe designer and artist

Walmajarri c. 1935–

Elsie Dickens designer and artist

Walmajarri c. 1935–

Duane Shaw technician, designer and artist

Gooniyandi/Walmajarri 1987–

Illiam Nargoodah technician, designer and artist

Walmajarri/Nyikina 1997–

Myarn Lawford designer and artist

Wangkajunga c. 1935–

Eva Nargoodah designer and artist

Walmajarri/Wangkajunga 1954–

Yangkarni Penny K-Iyons designer and artist

Walmajarri c. 1932–

Jangarra armchair

2017

Jartalu wood, eucalyptus (Eucalyptus sp.), human hair

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2019, 2019.275

Designed by Trent Jansen and Mangkaja Arts artists and designers, this armchair embodies a Western Australian desert cautionary tale of Jangarra, a giant, hairy man-killer who snatches children from behind anthills. Providing an eerie presence, rare human hair string was woven by Yangkarni Penny K-Iyons and Myarn Lawford, the community’s last traditional hair-weavers.

Brian Martin artist

Muruwari/ Bundjalung/Kamilaroi 1972–

Methexical Countryscape Paakantyi #2

2013

charcoal on paper

Purchased NGV Foundation, 2013, 2013.100.a-dd

Brian Martin photographs Paakantyi Country around Broken Hill and Menindee in New South Wales. Martin begins with trees, walking until a tree or topographical feature reveals the nature of this Country and dictates the image to be taken. He divides and scales that image across thirty sheets of paper, drawing from sheet thirty to sheet one, so the image only reveals itself as the work nears completion. He draws each panel looking down, making the process intimate rather than representational. The charcoal and paper are both made from trees, embedding the materials in Country. As Martin says, trees hold knowledge, histories and memories. He also says his drawings are what they are: Country.

Jessica Murtagh designer and maker

Australian 1986–

Yellowbox eucalyptus

2026

glass, 24-carat gold leaf

Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2026, 2026.189

Many works in this exhibition use plant matter as structure, fibre, dye or surface. This work displays it as an image. Jessica Murtagh has hand-drawn a yellowbox eucalyptus – leaves, buds, small gold-tipped flowers – onto the frosted glass of this commemorative vessel. At a moment when eucalyptus forests face increasing pressure from drought, fire and land clearing, Murtagh strives to record a member of the species with precision and care as a call for its preservation. Glass and gold have no plant origin, but the long tradition they belong to, the decorative vessel as display for natural beauty, is itself a form of reverence and documentation.

New acquisition