Saddle Vessel Long

Description

Johnny Nargoodah and Trent Jansen have been collaborating in the design and crafting of collectable furniture since they met in Johnny’s home town of Fitzroy Crossing in 2016, as part of Fremantle Art Centre’s ‘In Cahoots’ project. 

Johnny is a Nyikina man who has spent much of his life working with leather as a saddler on remote cattle stations, and Trent is an avant-garde object designer from Thirroul in New South Wales, who regularly experiments with leather and animal pelts in his collectable design work. ‘Partu’ is the Walmajarri word for ‘skin’, and formed the departure point for a collaborative project experimenting with the combination of disparate sensibilities.

The collection Saddle (2020) gains its name from the first sketch that Johnny made for this collection, an elongated saddle that led to experiments in stretching supple Scandinavian upholstery leather between geometric timber and steel forms to generate new, complex transitioning forms. Sketch exchanges over an 18-month period eventually yielded an entire collection built on this beautiful capability of leather to stretch between forms and give shape to the space in-between objects.

Johnny Nahgoodah & Trent Jansen
Saddle Vessel Long, 2020
Scandinavian leather, plywood, brass
32 x 24 x 60 cm
open edition