Post by James Goggin

Endgrained, an exhibition of new chairs, tables, stools, shelves, and mirrors by Martino Gamper, just wrapped up yesterday at Objectspace Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Practise worked on the exhibition identity, poster campaign, exhibition graphic design, and the forthcoming publication which has just gone to print, launching at Object Book Fair in a few weeks. Accompanying Endgrained was Wood from the trees, a collaborative research project by Gamper, Objectspace and designers James Goggin and Shan James of Practise, resulting in an adjacent ephemeral archive exhibition of timber histories in Aotearoa. Engrained was produced using a timber Gamper designed in collaboration with Italian company Alpi, made from the waste stream of industrial veneer production. Emerging from the designer’s imagination, this new man-made timber possesses a language of grain and colour not found in naturally grown timbers. Seen together the two projects express Gamper’s enduring love of timber and honour the decades he has spent working with this material that is as old as time. As well as a hosting a busy public program including live performance, talks and workshops, Objectspace and Gamper invited the public to book the gallery for free, for their own use — be it for a rehearsal, family gathering or public meeting. Taking the form of a common space, the spatial layout of the exhibition changed over time, altered by the visitors who shaped the furniture into their own configurations. Photography (slides 3–10) by Sam Hartnett. Slide 10 courtesy Lett Thomas Gallery.