James Walsh
James Walsh is Naarm/Melbourne based furniture and industrial designer. Making furniture and homewares for his own studio brand and leading Australian companies, his practice demonstrates a combination of traditional, often primitive, design methods with contemporary techniques. A prevalent theme throughout Walsh’s practice is his interest in the use of waste materials and how they can be used with cultural and design significance. This being best represented in his exploration of bluestone in his Igneous wall light, and the use of waste glass material in his recent Anthropic series.
Walsh has been exhibited across Australia as well as in Italy as part of Milan Salone. He is recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the 2020 Australian Furniture Design Award, 2017 Interior Design Excellence Award and the 2016 VIVID – Decord and Design Award. He holds a Bachelor of Industrial Design (First Class Honours), RMIT.
I feel all makers have a large responsibility when using materials, but I don't think that's limited to designers and artists. Take for example the construction industry which is one of the world's largest consumers of materials and natural resources, and consequently a large producer of waste materials. As an industrial designer who has designed and developed commercial products for plastic injection moulding or glass moulding in the thousands, I feel I had a large responsibility in either designing the object as efficiently as possible, as desirable as possible, or to somehow make use of recycled materials in the production process.
/ James Walsh