Jessie French

Image by Amelia Stanwix

Jessie French is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist and experimental designer, working with bioplastics. Her practice explores consumption, symbiosis, ecology, science and technology in the context of human experience amidst human-driven environmental crisis. She is interested in engaging with environmentally vital issues and experimental artistic projects refracted through the lens of science. Housed within an ethos of consumption, sustainability and regeneration, her practice invites others to engage with the possibilities of a post-petrochemical world. Through experimenting with other materials, she explores the potential for closed-loop systems of

(re)use and conscious consumption and interaction with objects. In 2020, French founded OTHER MATTER, an experimental design studio working with algae-based bioplastics which engages others in the possibilities of new materials through objects, experiences and futures.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.