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Ross Gardam Launches Two New Product Ranges
Design studio Ross Gardam is known for its boundary-pushing, statement-making furniture and lighting, and chose Melbourne Design Week 2024 to launch two new and excitingly avant-garde products.
Ross Gardam’s range of lighting and furniture products, while first and foremost designed for functionality, are also sculptural flights of fancy, bringing joy and wonder to any space. Designed and manufactured in Melbourne, a city with the soul of an artist, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting home for this imaginative studio. There is likewise no better place to introduce a new range of products than Melbourne Design Week, with the studio presenting its new work close to home at ‘Equilibrium’ – an exhibition at Le Space gallery – as part of the MDW 2024 program.
“MDW is growing so much and is definitely the main date in the design calendar for Melbourne and Australia,” says Gardam of the event’s increasing significance in the industry. This formal introduction to the new products followed a more theatrical exhibit at the brutalist space Under Construction, where the products were contrasted with distressed concrete and dramatically lit to shine as artistic beacons in the darkness.
The most exciting new launch for the studio was the Mass table, a limited-edition object using natural stone offcuts and plate aluminium in a daring collision of the manmade with the natural world. “The Mass table utilises marble offcuts to weigh down the base of the table and supply a level of stability,” Gardam says. “The frame is made from plate aluminium, bead blasted and waxed to create the industrial-inspired form.” Seven Mass tables have been created, each utilising a distinctly different stone offcut, from travertine to the full colour spectrum of marble. The result is a masterclass in contradiction, both raw and elemental, while also celebrating utilitarian design principles in its sleekly simple aluminium frame.
Mass is described as a “quiet experiment” for the studio, designed to inform future production. So, while the Mass table is currently available only in a limited-edition run of seven, one might hope to see this piece appear in new and exciting iterations in the near future. “The Mass table is an exploration and I don’t see it as the conclusion of this process,” says Gardam.
The Under Construction and ‘Equilibrium’ exhibits also introduced design devotees to a new spin on an old favourite – the newly reconfigured Volant lighting collection. Volant is an exquisite marriage of solid brass with textured tubular glass, producing a soft diffused light. Volant is already available as two- and three-branch chandeliers, but with the new releases, the studio is exploring the impact of the design as wall lights and as a chandelier in a larger format. “The new versions presented at MDW showcase the versatility of the fixture to work in larger format spaces. We have released the Volant 55 and 66 series, which feature five- and six-drop chandeliers designed for large stairwells, foyers and commercial spaces. We’ve also re-interpreted the collection with two new wall lights, creating distinct statement luminaires.” With long, dramatic drops of brass bars, around which the tubular glass appears to float, the Volant chandelier is like a kinetic sculpture, appearing to revolve as one moves around it.
The 55 and 66 are beautifully complementary pieces to the Volant wall light range, which adds a delicate level of luminosity to any space. Architectural in form, the wall lights are comprised of a solid brass bar, to which are pinned a white glass diffuser and a textured tubular glass element. They are available in myriad permutations, each reflective of the perfect marriage between glass and brass.
Like all of Ross Gardam’s work, the Volant series blurs the boundary between art and functional design – in the most exquisite way.
