Anna Varendorff’s Otherworldly Light | MAF x NGV Design Commission
Image credit: Portrait of Anna Varendorff. Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis
Awarded the inaugural MAF x NGV Design Commission, Anna Varendorff is presenting her most ambitious work to date at the 2026 Melbourne Art Fair; an expansive installation that pushes her signature tubular language into new spatial, material and conceptual territory. Known for a practice that moves fluidly between jewellery, sculpture, product and lighting design, Varendorff brings a metalsmith’s intimacy with materials to her objects that appear at once minimal, industrial and quietly uncanny.
Commissioned to create a work that functions as both a light source and a vessel, something that could transition from the charged atmosphere of the fair to its permanent home at the NGV, Varendorff has responded with U lights and vases: a rhythmic constellation of suspended lights, ceiling-hung vases and monumental floor forms.
At its core, the work is a meditation on labour, material intelligence and scale. Beneath its restrained geometry lies extraordinary technical complexity, close bends, mirrored forms and finely finished surfaces that speak to decades of embodied knowledge in metalwork, as well as deep collaboration with local fabricators. In this conversation, Varendorff reflects on her practice and the commission.
Can you describe the concept behind your MAF x NGV Commission and how it differs from your previous work?
The concept for the work is a response to several parameters. As it is a design commission, I was asked to design the work function as both a light source and as vessels. And that it be adaptable to both the MAF and the NGV environments. Then, personally, I wanted to create functional objects that elicit curiosity about how they were made. Objects that are both the result of industry and imagination, and that, in their resolution, present something slightly alien, slightly otherworldly, unfamiliar, so that when we encounter them, we are momentarily taken away from what we know. I wanted to think about the highly crafted nature of the objects hidden within their minimal appearance.
Your U lights and vases expand your signature tubular forms into a large-scale installation. How did the scale of the commission influence your creative process?
The scale of the commission offers possibilities beyond the reach of my regular practice. It has allowed me to work to achieve things that are materially complex, which is exciting. It also changes the creative process when working at this scale, because it requires significantly more planning, problem-solving, and co-ordinating than smaller or more experimental works.
The installation balances suspended and grounded elements. How did you approach the interplay of light, form, and space in this work?
I wanted the objects to sort of swarm. There are lots of vertical and curved lines that intensify as you pass, but still permitting glimpses of the ‘other side’ of the work between them, including other people’s bodies also passing, reflections in the surface, movement and activity. Visual information is both interrupted and amplified by the work. It’s a part of the crowd. The pieces are matte silver, and this reflects adjacent colours and forms without much tonal alteration, so the surroundings become integrated into the work's surface. Because the objects are matte not mirrored metal, there is an otherworldly, unfocussed blur to the forms.
Craft and industrial precision are central to your practice. How do you negotiate between meticulous metalwork and a sense of poetic lightness?
Because I work on the pieces myself, before and after they are bent or have been welded, there is a lot of my hand in the finished object. Finishing metal to a beautiful lustre is seriously labour-intensive, and even though there are tools that help to do it, inevitably, there is always a very strong legacy of handwork in the finish. For me, this connects the work to the labour that created it, and to the history of metalwork and industry that facilitates these materials and forms. After many, many passes with sandpapers and abrasives, the form is finally buffed just by hand. This leaves such a sensitive finish on the work.
The forms are also held upright on plates that create the illusion of standing delicately, and they are suspended from the ceiling by slender rods, so these fluctuations in volume help the work feel light.
Image credit: Anna Varendorff working in the studio. Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis.
How did your training as a metalsmith inform the design and fabrication of the MAF x NGV Commission?
For about 20 years I have worked with metal almost every day, so it is familiar to me. I can make judgments about its behaviour, capacities, and surface that are essentially embodied knowledge: not through any exceptional skill but rather through familiarity and interest. I also work with other fabricators to realise projects, which means we need to communicate about the material. An idea – for example, to make a thick, close bend – will then result in only a few options once the available tubes are identified, the appropriate bending system for the scale and type of material is determined, the bender has the correct equipment (tools are not universal), and the time and staffing to do the work are in place, etc. There are dozens of factors that shape the final variation, and so the idea moves from a concept to a concrete outcome. All practices have their own versions of these limitations, and the persistence to work with or overcome these parameters, paired with the concept, results in the work.
FUTUREOBJEKT is a platform that highlights experimental and collectible design. How do you see your work fitting into this context?
I make both functional and less functional objects - serious archival pieces and playful experimental pieces. Perhaps at the beginning, as with this commission, the ideas might be considered experimental, but by the time it is brought to a refined resolution, I think it leaves the realm of experimental and becomes something else. This is where its resolved singularity makes it special. It is fully realised, highly functioning, and intentionally crafted. But that’s inevitably why it becomes rarified and enters a gallery environment. I wish the process didn’t make it so rarefied, but this really has a lot to do with how or whose labour is or isn’t valued in our current society. The work can also be transformed by context, so if it were shown in an industrial warehouse or in a garden shed, it would have an entirely different read.
The installation includes mirrored forms — one upright, one inverted. What inspired this pairing and rhythm in the composition?
The mirrored forms are technically complex, despite looking very simple. They open in opposing directions, offering light sources upwards and downwards. In a group like this, they create a sort of glowing industrial cloud. The hard aluminium is broken up, and the lights are dispersed among it, fracturing the metal's hardness.
Image credit: Anna Varendorff’s studio. Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis
Your work spans jewellery, sculpture, product, and lighting design. How do you decide which medium or scale best expresses an idea?
I am often invited to participate in projects with a specific focus, which narrows it down for me from the beginning. If I am given open slather, I think about the project through my own inclinations. I have a massive backlog of ideas I am thinking about making at all times. The galleries and curators I show with – Oigall, Caves, Alta Forma, Micky Schubert at Warrnambool Art Gallery – these spaces allow me free rein, which is magical. The context of the invitation and, significantly, the site for the work, help me determine what the work might be.
Many of your works explore the dialogue between craft, design, and architecture. How do you see these disciplines intersecting in your current practice?
I think that these disciplines are always in dialogue, everywhere. Even in the absence of ‘good’ craft/design/architecture, we still have to deal collectively with the impact of the bad – waste being my particular anxiety - and everything in between. In my practice, these overlapping dialogues inform every aspect of the work.
How do you balance ambition and restraint when designing for a public, highly curated context like FUTUREOBJEKT?
I don’t think I try to balance ambition in a personal sense; I just try to conceive of and make a work as considered and realised as I can for the site, budget and opportunity. If I am thinking of ambition for the work, my hope is to agitate for people to think about materials, how they are worked, and what it is to encounter something physical as opposed to virtual. To think about labour, skill and value, extrapolated out to industrial fabrication in Australia, and who has this skill.
Are there particular Australian or international designers, artists, or movements that have inspired this installation?
I often think about Charlotte Posenenske and her use of industrial processes in the creation of sculptural works. I have thought about Eva Hesse and her use of suspension and repetition in this work. From my first encounter with her work at Queensland Art Gallery, I have loved the work of Lorraine Connelly-Northey, adapting metal to vastly different scales but staying in a long conversation with repeated forms, resulting in her own vernacular. Lygia Clarke is always an influence both materially and conceptually.
