about
Tactile Dialogues: Fragments of Matter invites audiences to experience fragmentation as both material and concept. A space where new forms, partial views, and traces of thought become the starting point for dialogue, curiosity, and reflection.
Following on from the warm reception of Tactile Dialogues 2025, this year’s iteration, presented by Made by Morgen and curated by Ryan Fernandes, invites audiences to engage with fragments as frameworks for exchange. Crafted objects, emerging material systems, ceramics, glass and tactile materials become conduits for dialogue between matter, maker and participant.
We explore the material intelligence that only comes from a maker’s hand: shaping with precision, yet allowing space for play, variation and evolution.
Fragmentation here is not absence, but possibility. An invitation to consider process, temporality and transformation
On opening night, guests were invited to a unique and ephemeral dining experience that extends the tactile dialogue into taste and scent. Fragments of flavour and aroma unfold alongside the material works, expanding the sensory field.
Visitors move through a constellation of tactile encounters: surfaces that freeze time in liquid-form patterning, timber forms that offer calm, ceramic fragments that invite curiosity, glass that captures and refracts light, and edible elements that dissolve or transform with touch.
The installation encourages mindful, embodied engagement asking audiences to listen, feel and observe. Through a choreography of touch, trace and transformation, Tactile Dialogues: Fragments of Matter investigates material temporality and proposes design as a living, unfinished practice.
During the program, we also hosted a panel with design journalist Aleesha Callahan on 'About Futures' where we dive into the exhibition, the makers and the role these materials may play in circular design and construction, alongside the broader cultural impact of collectible design.
Collaborators and Material Voices
Other Matter presents the first furniture pieces developed in collaboration with Made By Morgen and using its patented material system, originally developed for architectural surfaces. The system received Dezeen’s 2025 Surface Design of the Year award. The seating pieces incorporate a dense, leather-like surface created through Other Matter’s closed-loop recycling process, where offcuts and returned signage are reprocessed into a durable leather-like material. The pieces demonstrate how circular, non-petrochemical material systems can extend into furniture design.
Made by Morgen anchors the installation with crafted timber forms, offering structure and stillness amid the ephemeral. Their work highlights the dialogue between permanence and impermanence, revealing the quiet beauty and enduring integrity of timber.
Jon Goulder pushes boundaries with a chair that balances strength and subtle tactility. Moulded leather develops a rich patina over time, speaking to context, use and lived history.
Sarah Nedovic contributes ceramic tactile forms that evoke memory and invite pause. Pieces that feel excavated, half-formed or mid-evolution.
Jordan Fleming brings idiosyncratic, experimental sculptural works that convey presence and quiet, building responsive energy within space.
Emma Davies satisfies her curiosity by working with contemporary materials and using unconventional methods to challenge the possibilities of each creation. By removing materials from common functionality such as packaging and being able to transform what is intrinsically ugly into something beautiful.
V.BROKKR (Ned Vernon) infuses the exhibition with architectural elegance and symbolic depth, presenting objects that shape and elevate everyday rituals.
Billy Crellin explores glass as sculptural fragments, transforming raw earthly material into objects of utility and pleasure.
Ryan L Foote rethinks the physical and ephemeral experience of materials, expressed through tableware, and conceptualises new forms to bring to life a unique dining experience that emphasises textures and tastes.
Meet the Team
Nick McDonald and Anaïs Molé from Made By Morgen (@madebymorgen) & Ryan Fernandes (@ryanfernandesdesign).
Photography by Lillie Thompson(@lillie_thompson)
-
Interior Designer
Ryan is an interior designer with a dedicated focus on furniture, art, and objects. He continues to build a repertoire of iconic designs, combining a keen eye for what people crave in their homes with a commitment to creating timeless spaces.
Follow Ryan on Instagram @ryanfernandesdesign
-
Furniture and Design
Nick McDonald, Founder and director and Anaïs Molé, Studio Manager.
Made by Morgen is refined yet boundless, conscious furniture design. We emphasise a products ability to age and embody a story.
With inspiration from mid-century Scandinavian design, we work by hand to create refreshing, unique and individualised pieces for people, places and spaces. We maintain traditional workmanship and quality, sourcing materials that support this standard.
Follow Made By Morgen on Instagram @madebymorgen
-
![]()
Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s largest and leading annual design festival and takes place from 14–24 May 2026.
The 2026 program spans 11 days of 400+ events, exhibitions, talks, and installations throughout metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Melbourne Design Week is a vital platform for emerging and established creative practitioners, offering the Australian design community and audiences the opportunity to engage with a diverse program of talks, tours, exhibitions, installations, and workshops.
Melbourne Design Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and is curated and delivered by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
Visit designweek.melbourne to view the full program.
Subscribe to NGV eNews for all Melbourne Design Week updates.
