The National Gallery of Victoria’s world-premiere exhibition Plant Life: The Nature of Design opens at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia on 28 August 2026, showcasing plant-based materials as alternatives to plastics, from fungi leather and hemp fibreboard to bio-plastics shaping future design.
Presented across four chapters, the exhibition features more than 60 works spanning furniture, architecture, decorative arts, photography and film from the NGV Collection, alongside RMIT University commissions and international loans.
Designers include Formafantasma, Joris Laarman, Crafting Plastics and EAST Architecture Studio, showing plant-based design moving into mainstream practice.
The exhibition foregrounds First Nations materials such as bull kelp, bark, bamboo and yaré vine, alongside Emma Håkansson’s SHIRINGA documentary and Chris Wolston’s Nalgona Chair, highlighting long-held ecological knowledge systems.
The exhibition is framed by designers working at the frontier of plant-based transition design practice.
‘This NGV-exclusive exhibition shines a spotlight on Australian and international designers who are using plant-based materials to radically transform our world,”said NGV Director, Tony Elwood.
“Moving away from abstract ideas and far-off possibilities, this exhibition powerfully reframes conversations around sustainability by offering real, tangible – and above all beautiful – examples of design created using plant-based polymers, leather, mycelium and more,” he said.
More information and tickets are available via NGV website NGV.MELBOURNE
