Beyond the Table: The Dinner Party Reimagined is a reimagining of a traditional dinner party, with a nod to 1970s nostalgia and celebrating one of the key gathering spaces in our homes, the humble dining table.
The installation is on display at Manningham Art Gallery as part of Melbourne Design Week, Australia's premier design festival featuring events across Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Emerging Manningham artist Isobel Goodman responds to and selects works from Manningham Council’s ‘Potters Cottage Collection,’ a grouping of vessels created by the Potters Cottage co-operative. The co-operative was founded in Warrandyte in 1958 to advocate for and sell handmade functional Australian pottery.
Goodman hand builds her signature papier mâché and plaster sculptures – organic and abstracted forms to reference a dinner party table setting – vases, cutlery, plates, and candlesticks that play off and create a contemporary juxtaposition against the Potters Cottage vessels from the 1970s.
Surrounding the central dining table presentation is a display of paintings from local Manningham artist Jade Piltz. These works depict bright, layered and abstract domestic objects that encapsulate the exhibition’s celebration of communal gathering and ritual.
During Melbourne Design Week (15-25 May) visitors can take home a flower to celebrate this exhibition.
Artist Bios:
Isobel Goodman was recently awarded a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Melbourne. Her practice focuses on sculptural exploration and the body’s navigation of space and environment through the perspective of APD (Auditory Processing Disorder). She invites audiences to examine their relationship between the physical self and how we navigate the world around us.
Jade Piltz is a Warrandyte painter and ceramist. She is fascinated by our innate search for belonging, our desire for meaning and relationships to change and transition. Using mark making, she explores the ways our interactions with surrounding spaces and objects, narrate and inform our lives.
This Exhibition was supported by Gabriela Mello, owner and director of Warrandyte Pottery, through artist mentorship and technical and conceptual support and curated by Lucy Beattie Hughes, Manningham Council’s Creative Industries Officer.
Jade Piltz, Alone, Together (detail), 2024, acrylic on canvas, 168 x 122cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by: Emily Brookfield.
Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s largest and leading annual design festival and takes place from 15 to 25 May 2025.
The 2025 program spans 11 days of 350+ events, exhibitions, talks, and installations throughout metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Melbourne Design Week is a vital platform for emerging and established creative practitioners, offering the Australian design community and audiences the opportunity to engage with a diverse program of talks, tours, exhibitions, installations, and workshops. Melbourne Design Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and is curated and delivered by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
Visit designweek.melbourne to view the full program.
