Signature Artwork Commission 2019
DESIGN Canberra Festival

Phoebe Porter was selected as the 2019 DESIGN Canberra designer-in-residence and commissioned to create a signature artwork to be exhibited during the festival and featured throughout festival communications. Her work, titled Elements of Balance, was created in response to the 2019 festival theme of utopia while celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus.

Referencing the form of the crane (familiar in Canberra skylines today), the work features two contrasting elements, gold and aluminium, of equal weight that balance each other perfectly.

"To me, utopia is a vision of the ideal way to live in an ideal environment," Porter says.

"But there is a central tension embodied in that concept: striving to achieve a state of utopia requires the careful balance of competing values to attain a harmonious society and life."

Inspired by the Bauhaus methodology of playful experimentation with colour and form, Elements of Balance combines contrasting line weights and meticulously connected components. The work was designed so that its balance would be disrupted if any element were removed, underscoring the delicate interdependence of its parts.

Ultimately, Elements of Balance serves as a meditation on balance, visual, physical, and philosophical and offers an optimistic reflection on moments of perfect harmony, however subjective they may be.