Trent Jansen is an object designer whose practice is founded in material culture theory. Proposed by academic Jules Prown, material culture suggests that the belief systems - the values, ideas, attitudes, assumptions and aspirations – of a particular community or society can be understood through the objects and artefacts which were designed and made within it. Think of what a Shaker style armchair says about its modest, deeply religious community versus the furniture from the period of Louis XVI, both of the 18thC.

Trent calls himself a design anthropologist, seeking to design and produce user-friendly everyday objects which are embodied with a contemporary Australian identity, devoid of stereotypes but real and all embracing. The series of functional objects Ngumu Janka Warnti (All made from rubbish) of 2020 arose from his collaborations with Johnny Nargoodah, a Nykina/ Walmajarri Elder of Fitzroy Crossing. The results are groundbreaking such that this body of work won the 2021 Australian Design Awards in both the furniture and collaboration categories.
Images of Trent’s work and his collaborations with Johnny Nargoodah can be seen at trentjansen.com.

and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert in Sydney. Also check out Mangkaja Arts in Fitzroy Crossing for more information on Johnny Nargoodah.
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