2021 Australian Interior Design Awards: Installation Design

Jury comment

Jury members wholeheartedly agreed that The Bleeding Tree is the clear winner in the Installation Design category. The stage set’s stripped-back simplicity demonstrates mastery of form through the use of two planes that visually guide the audience in its emotional response to the performance in front of them. Minimalist lighting and the planes’ different compositions also influence the mood on stage for the performers and, more significantly, provides gravitas to the play’s theme of violence against women.

In a category that has enormous diversity and scale, this project brings us back to the way interior design can affect emotion and does so with the most minimal of gestures. The use of the two planes is innovative, experimental and powerful, creating a tension through subtle movements. It is an extraordinarily well-considered, bold and graphic resolution.

Design statement

Angus Cerini’s crafted play The Bleeding Tree taps into the theme of ongoing violence against women, challenging notions of disempowerment, using black humour to present discomfort. To enable the clarity of Cerini’s words to be preserved, the set design needed to be uncluttered and restrained, providing a backdrop that amplifies the emotion and enhances the starkness. The design embodies and supports the narrative arc of the work, from constraint, oppression and volatility through to strength, stability and regaining control.

Liminal Spaces’ involvement showcases how the spatially tuned sensibility of architects/interior designers, and our awareness of how body and space inform one another, can add value to contemporary performances. The added layer provided by the spatial context can heighten meaning, enrich visual interpretations and intensify theatrical experiences.

The simple set design, or transformable “installation,” created for this performance is innovative in the way that the distillation of spatial design is used to interconnect with the theatrical themes, amplifying, supporting and enhancing the performances of the actors and the narrative, contributing to the element of surprise and the unexpected.

Design practice — Liminal Spaces

Project team — Marta Dusseldorp, Ben Winspear (both Archipelago Productions), Paul Colegrave, Ellen Roe, Glenn Richards, Jason James, Jane Johnson, Kartanya Maynard

The Award for Installation Design supported by Interiors Australia. The Australian Interior Design Awards are presented by the Design Institute of Australia and Artichoke magazine. For more images of this project, see the Australian Interior Design Awards gallery.