Melbourne Design Week – Furnishing Culpra

Part of NGV's Melbourne Design Week.

Furnishing Culpra situates collaboratively designed furniture pieces constructed from salvaged surplus River Red Gum from an abandoned milling operation on Culpra Station in western NSW. Furnishing Culpra highlights how design can be operationalised, providing both a vehicle and shared language through which to develop relationships between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Through valuing differing ways of knowing/doing/being we are developing strategies to address past wrongs whilst looking firmly towards the future, through the present—practicing reconciliation.

The exhibition compromising, traditional weaving, mapping, art work, projections, photography and furniture made from timber harvested from country. This exhibition is a key point within a wider body of research and practice and will raise awareness of and refine work being undertaken on Culpra to develop physical, social and cultural infrastructure. It will further engage with issues and opportunities that come from cross-cultural collaboration.

CMAC
Culpra Milli Aboriginal Corporation (CMAC) is an Aboriginal Organisation that holds and manages land on behalf of its members. CMAC was first established after 1997 and registered as an Aboriginal Corporation in 2004 with the ownership of and management responsibility for Culpra Station. Culpra is situated in New South Wales, approximately 50 kilometres southeast of Gol Gol and 42 kilometres north-west of Euston. Culpra Station comprises of 8,5000 hectares situated amongst spectacular riverine forests of tall river red gums, rolling red sand dunes and Murray River frontage. Evidence of Aboriginal occupation of the country over millennia is abundantly evident with cultural heritage sites including stone hearth ovens and fire-places, ancient aqua-cultural engineering feats, canoe trees and other scarred trees as well as shell middens extending through the soil profile.

Office
Office is a multidisciplinary design not for profit whose mandate is to utilise the tools or architecture and design to create outcomes for the public good. Office has had a relationship with CMAC and the Pearce Family (the custodians of Culpra Station) for the last 6 years and have collaborated on a number of projects.