We're welcoming The Chair: a story of design and making in Aotearoa to Ōtautahi Christchurch with a Coffee & Croissants conversation on the exhibitions first day open.

The Chair’s Ōtautahi showing features a select group of chairs from a project collating 110 chairs made across 170 years – each chosen for its expression of design and making in Aotearoa. 

Join us to hear some of these stories from curator and Objectspace Director Kim Paton and designers/makers Gerard Dombroski, David Moreland and Natasha Perkins. 

You’ll gain insights into the development of this show and its accompanying publication, which will be available to purchase. Spaces are limited and registrations are essential.

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Kim Paton has been the Director of Objectspace since 2015. Her interest is in interdisciplinary exhibition making across the fields of craft, design, architecture and contemporary art. Paton has curated and written extensively on object-based art forms, including essays in the recent publications Cheryl Lucas: Shaped by Schist and Scoria (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022) and David Straight: Locations of Interest (Objectspace, 2023). Paton co-authored the book Contemporary Jewellery in Context, published by arnoldsche Art Publishers (2017). She is the co-editor of upcoming publication The Chair: A story of design and making in Aotearoa (2024).

Gerard Dombroski is an architect, artist and furniture maker based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His architectural work spans residential and commercial projects over a range of scales and is delivered in dialogue with his studio practice. Insights and materials from the design and fabrication of furniture and sculptures feed into his architecture studio, and vice versa.

David Moreland established his eponymous design company back in 2009, but by then he had already cut his teeth with two of Aotearoa New Zealand’s best-known furniture designers. During his three years at David Trubridge’s Cicada Studios in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay, an incubator for furniture design graduates, he developed the design of his Framed range. Later, he worked at Simon James Design, as Head of Production, simultaneously running his own business. In 2014 Moreland became Città’s Head of Furniture and Product Design – the beginning of a fruitful and creative period in his career.

Natasha Perkins (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānauā- Apanui) grew up in the coastal village of Paekākāriki. She has an academic and professional background in industrial, interior, product and furniture design, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Wellington School of Architecture at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University. She worked in practice with Clare Athfield at Last Paddock Design for more than two decades, consulting in the areas of product design and development, interior, retail design and architectural products. Perkins has exhibited furniture in Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain and Italy. She has won an international Red Dot Award, and has gained international and national honours in numerous awards, ranging from wearable arts to interiors, urban furniture, architecture and product.

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Coffee & Croissants is a conversation series supported by our friends at Allpress Espresso.