Platform 24 - Craft Encounters

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Leon Kipa, part of Platform 24 — Craft Encounters. Image: Supplied

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Platform is a forum created to bring design, craft and object-makers together to cross-pollinate, support and exhibit. It rounds off the year with Platform 24 — Craft Encounters, an exhibition of work by a number of New Zealand’s well known designer/makers.

The exhibition opening 17 November at The Grey Place Gallery in Auckland, brings together ten mid-career designer/makers, presenting an array of craft explorations, furniture forms, assemblages, and carved sculptures, with common ideals of respect for materials and the environment running through the work.

Visitors can expect high quality craftsmanship and diverse materials ranging from boiled leather to plexiglass, with found objects and precious native timber inbetween. Each practitioner brings their journey of industry experience, ideas, and skills to the forum, making for a varied and accomplished show.

Platform 24 — Craft Encounters features Platform instigators Edward Fuller and Kennedy Brown, joined by Leon Kipa, Tim Wigmore, Rebecca Asquith, Chad Heays, Marion Courtillé, Roger Kelly, Rupert Herring, and Katy Wallace.

With the cohort based as far apart as Auckland, Hawkes Bay, Taranaki and Tairawhiti, Platform has created a reason to come together — strength in numbers. One of the biggest outcomes organisers anticipate from the forum is: “The opportunity to hang out with people who speak the same language of making and share a passion for materials and ideas.”

Platform 24 is the first in what Platform envision will be an ongoing event in New Zealand’s design and craft calendar.