WELCOME TO THE 2018 ISSUE OF MARMALADE!

This, our sixth issue in as many years, is undoubtedly our best yet and I’m sure you will enjoy reading it and sharing it.

The term ‘sharing’ today is so synonymous with the use of electronic social media but my reference to sharing Marmalade is of course a reference to the generous and physical act of leaving it on the coffee table at home or in the staff room at work for others to feel in their hands. This locally printed 60-page hard-copy publication is unapologetically analogue in a digital age.

Marmalade speaks of the importance of design and creativity, and of materiality and skilled manufacturing, in a similar way to the pottery we have produced in our studios for leading restaurants or the JamFactory Furniture Collection pieces that have been specified by architects for some outstanding commercial interiors.

Professional artists, designers and craftspeople are providing an increasingly welcome alternative to the ubiquitous and mass-produced goods that are overwhelming us.

In this issue we reveal some of the thinking behind the ways that contemporary design is being curated and collected in some of the nation’s most significant cultural institutions. Our own Senior Curator Margaret Hancock Davis has interviewed key curators from the National Gallery of Victoria, the Powerhouse Museum, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Art Gallery of Western Australia for this important feature (page 14).

Arguably the biggest annual showcase of contemporary design in the world is the Salone del Mobile Milano – regularly referred to as the Milan Furniture Fair, or for those in the business, simply as ‘Milan’. We invited Leanne Amodeo, who is one of the most accomplished design writers in Australia, to reflect on the significant number of South Australian, designers who exhibited in ‘Milan’ in 2018 (page 28).

2018 saw the opening of the University of South Australia’s Pridham Hall – a dynamic swimming pool and recreation complex that transforms into a grand hall for graduation ceremonies. JamFactory was part of the design team, along with local architects JPE Design Studio and global firm Snøhetta and we engaged Nathan James Crane to write about this unusual and successful collaboration (page 40).

The two most critically acclaimed presentations i in JamFactory’s main exhibition gallery this year were the extraordinary exhibitions by worldleading South Australian artists Kirsten Coelho and Clare Belfrage. Coelho’s body of work was presented as part of the Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Australian Art while Belfrage’s was JamFactory’s annual Icon exhibition in conjunction with the South Australian Living Artists festival and the publishing of a major monograph on her work. We have featured both of these remarkable projects (pages 26 and 34).

JamFactory is fortunate to have attracted loyal and significant philanthropic support in recent years through our Medici Collective program and other initiatives. One of the highlights of what we have been able to achieve as a result of this private support is the very successful biennial FUSE Glass Prize. The very deserving winner of the prize in 2018 was South Australian artist Jessica Loughlin. Leading glass authority Margot Osborne has written an insightful review of the finalists’ exhibition (page 44).

This rich and beautiful magazine is only one of many ways that JamFactory tells the stories of contemporary craft and design in Australia. Visit our shops, see our exhibitions in regional and metropolitan galleries across Australia or, as a clear majority of our audience now does, look at us online via our website or via social media.

While it is true we cherish and celebrate the tactile, haptic object at JamFactory, we also want to promote the value and importance of these things to the world and to do this in the twenty first century we must seamlessly embrace the digital. We hope to deliver more of the type of content featured in this magazine in alternative formats through our online platforms in the future and I look forward to telling you more.

In the meantime, enjoy!

Brian Parkes CEO and Artistic Director JamFactory