For Sydney based industrial designer Tom Fereday, considering and highlighting the genesis of the design process and embracing the raw origins of materiality, is an essential part of his much awarded practice. It is an opportunity to celebrate the innovations, as well as the products, objects and elevated experiences that good, lasting design can produce. For his show Aver (from the Latin ‘ad’ - to and ‘versus’ - true), showing at Oigåll Projects for Melbourne Design Week, Fereday draws back the curtain for an honest display of material inquiries, experimentations and applications. Displaying early explorations with recycled glass, raw and recycled Aluminium juxtaposed with finished furniture, and art objects presented as functional pieces, Fereday reaffirms the concept of design as something to be felt and experienced rather than just viewed. The show acts as an incubator for new thoughts and approaches, inviting audiences to interact with design in both a tangible and audible way, with Fereday exhibiting a series of engineered audio sculptures and high performance sound pieces, alongside a combination of new works and early editions from his eponymous studio. This considered dialogue between established and emerging design is core to Fereday’s ethos, accentuating the importance of exploration as well as the impact and true value of longevity, quality and craftsmanship. Design is often experienced in a way that is final and fully-formed, packaged and presented as a finished glittering object or a complete concept, as if eagerly evading traces of its origin or whispers of earlier development. A destination rather than a journey. It will often deliberately hinge on specificity and the allure of ‘ultra exclusivity’, making a molehill out of a mountain and leaving in its wake a tide of discarded material and off-cuts destined for industrial graveyards. It is a strict performance, all gritting teeth behind a painted-on smile, frantic eyes hoping nobody will look further than the facade lest the illusion of effortlessness falters. Photography by; Annika Kafcaloudis