Ema Stoličná
The exhibition of 26 original fakes which were presented at the Melbourne Design Week is a reaction to the occurence of uncertified replicas of contemporary design techniques in Australia. The aim was to reevaluate the value of copies on the creative as well as commercial market. False furniture takes on an original design and in most cases, it degrades it. A cheap copy might at the first sight look identical to the original, but the truth is, it is very different regarding quality as well as endurance, function or aesthetics, as well as the essence of the original design.
The exhibition presented a series of interferences with replicas of the well-known chair HAL originally designed by Jasper Morrison. Curators bought 26 replicas of this chair and brought them to 26 contemporary Australian designers. Some of them modified the replica or destroyed it completely. Others created a replica of a replica using entirely different materials. All of them carry the same message calling attention to the problems of the forgery of furniture in Australia.