MPavilion 2021 Dancer Chair

MPavilion 2021 Dancer Chair

mpavilion 2021 chair
the dancer by Nüüd studio

mpavilion 2021 chair
the dancer by Nüüd studio

Are you ready to dance together again?

After 262 days of lockdown—of socialising through screens and turning our living rooms into makeshift dancefloors—we are slowly emerging from our homes to be reacquainted with the Melbourne we have so sorely missed. 

Designed by Kerli Valk and Bradley Mitchell of Nüüd studio as a key commission for MPavilion 2021, the ‘Dancer’ is a chair inspired by a longing to do just that—dance!

The concept for the chair was a social idea of unity and togetherness—with the name deriving from the Henri Matisse painting The Dance.

Bradley said, “we thought it was a really beautiful representation of this idea of what post covid life might be when we are dancing and being together again. There’s a lot of significant connotations in that painting and we looked at it like this joyous idea of freedom—there’s such a physical joy and happiness in dancing, so the name just stuck.”

When all together, the chairs come to form a circle. Once disconnected, they embrace in a continuous dance in and around MAP studio’s MPavilion, scattered in ribbons and arcs—a memory of the greater circle they can form again.

The chairs are made up of post-consumer recycled plastic—mainly milk and juice bottles—which have been shredded, melted, dyed and turned into pellets. The colours of the Dancer have been chosen to reflect the yellow organic floor, steel structure and reflections of clouds caught in the mirrored panels of MAP studio’s MPavilion.

Kerli added “It already exists in our world and there is nothing we can do to make it go away. The choice is either landfill or to recycle it into something else, so with this in mind, the material of the chair is providing a new life to something that would otherwise end up in the land.”

 

 

The design

kerli valk and bradley mitchell

Kerli Valk and Bradley Mitchell are designers and all round sticky-beaks. From furniture to spaces, they believe design can reflect who we are and positively contribute to our social lives and wellbeing. Their design approach is focused on research and influenced by understanding the narratives and personalities of the places and people they collaborate with. They seek to build with local material with craftspeople, and create projects that are necessary, healthy, ingrained from and in harmony with local environments.

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.