Christien Meindertsma wins 2024 Mecca x NGV Women in Design Commission

Netherlands-based designer Christien Meindertsma is the third recipient of the Mecca x National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Women in Design Commission.

The annual commission, to be held across a period of five years, invites international female designers to create a topical, world-premiere work of international significance for the NGV collection.

Renowned for her investigation and reimagining of materials, Meindertsma hopes to highlight the opportunity to embrace a new material era where waste is treated as a valuable design resource. Over the past two decades, Meindertsma has predominantly produced objects, textile and furniture works crafted from animal by-products, household waste, textile waste and forestry.

Meindertsma has won three Dutch Design Awards, as well as has works in permanent collections at MoMA (New York), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and the Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany). One of her most notable works, the One Sheep Sweater involved the production of twenty sweaters from the coats of individual merino sheep. Also highly regarded is the multi award-winning, biodegradable Flax Chair, made from a book titled Pig 05049, which documented all of the products made from a single pig.

For the 2024 commission, Meindertsma will use wool as the primary material, in response to vast quantities of coarse wool - traditionally grown in Europe - largely being perceived as unusable and subsequently being discarded. To be unveiled in October 2024, the commission will take the form of a large-scale installation. Using new 3D printing technology, developed in collaboration with Netherlands-based company Tools for Technology, the installation will reimagine wool by creating "a new, dynamic, 3D-printable super-material," said the NGV.

Director of NGV, Tony Ellwood, said Christien Meindertsma is an "inspiring designer who is developing groundbreaking methods of production to revolutionise the global wool industry," Ellwood said.

Meindertsma said the commission will enable her to further "explore and push the possibilities of wool as a strong and at the same time soft material, in directions it has not gone before."

In 2023, London-based designer Bethan Laura Wood presented the Mecca x NGV Women in Design Commission, an installation titled Kaleidoscope-o-rama.

To celebrate Christien Meindertsma winning the 2024 Mecca x NGV Women in Design Commission, the NGV will host a day of free programs on Saturday 9 March. As part of the event, Meindertsma will join in person the founder and co-CEO of Mecca, Jo Horgan, along with the previous recipients Bethan Laura Wood and Tatiana Bilbao via video link for a conversation about the commission. On the same day, the gallery will also host a workshop inspired by Meindertsma's material practice where visitors can learn to felt their own miniature woollen lamb.

The 2024 Mecca x NGV Women in Design Commission will be on display at the gallery from 4 October 2024 until February 2025.