Ikea has teamed up with 30 Australian artists to celebrate 30 years of its most iconic sofa, KIPPLAN. Each artist has been given a sofa to use as a canvas for their art. The finished project will be exhibited for a short time, then auctioned off online. Proceeds will go to help the Victorian Bush Fire Relief. Here are a few of our favourites. All of the sofas can be seen here at the Ikea Home Project.
Sarah Contos, Untitled (Sitting on the couch with Vince Noir) 2009
Vintage woolen jumpers, polystyrene balls, canvas and KLIPPAN
Sarah Contos has created Untitled (Sitting on the couch with Vince Noir) in which sensual forms ooze out of a canvas and cascade onto a couch. Made from vintage jumpers, the couch offers the occupant a flooding of cuddles, drippings of soft phalli and a forest blanket of woolly rainbows for all those nights spent alone on the sofa.
Agatha Gothe-Snape, Local Knowledge (For Beverly Gothe & Margo Snape) 2009
Woolen blankets and shawl
For this work, Agatha Gothe-Snape sourced hand-made, pure wool blankets from op shops; these blankets have undergone a similar processes of energy investment. Through wrapping the KLIPPAN in this way she is doubly investing it with energy which it will hold, carry and emanate in its new home.
Naomi Troski, Sprouting Easy 2009
Plastic and sisal rope
Sprouting Easy brings together contrasting, accessible industrial materials. The grid of bright orange plastic netting has become the supporting weft to the interwoven sisal rope and it is through the binding, tying, cutting and knotting of these materials that the form of the sofa has been activated.
Kate Rohde, Untitled
Paint and faux fur
Inspired by the human inclination to control and document nature. Kate Rohde creates opulent investigations into faux-taxidermy and Rococo styled vitrines.
By Melanie Carlson
