Wave, not wave

Wave, not Wave explores how our understanding of design changes when we look again at the histories we think we know.

The work takes its point of departure from Christopher Dresser’s nineteenth-century design The Wave. For years, I understood Dresser through the Arts and Crafts movement and its resistance to industrialisation. Further research unsettled that understanding. Dresser embraced industrial production, while the movements surrounding him were themselves entangled in global networks of labour, commerce, and cultural exchange.

This reconsideration opened a wider question: how do the categories we inherit shape what we see, and what might they prevent us from noticing? The work forms part of my ongoing investigation into the relationships between materials, technological change, and the systems that shape everyday life.