Australia’s Brightest Young Designers Shine at the Rigg Design Prize 2025

“Design is a desire to shape the world differently,” says NGV curator Simone LeAmon.

Now in its 10th iteration, the NGV’s triennial Rigg Design Prize has returned with the best of Australia’s world-shaping designers. Three decades since the first prize was awarded, the world has changed for designers and, as a result, this year’s prize field focuses exclusively on under-35, early-career talents.

“What we’ve learned is that early-career practice for designer-makers looks very different today than it did 30 years ago when the Rigg was established,” LeAmon says. “In the ’70s and ’80s, there were lots of pathways and pipelines for continued professional development. Now, many of those opportunities have transmogrified and training programs at university and TAFE, have either have shrunk, or they’ve simply disappeared.”

Alongside the $40,000 first prize, LeAmon and her fellow curators know the visibility that comes with the Rigg can be career-defining. This year, that spotlight falls on more than 30 designers, headlined by the 2025 winner, ceramicist Alfred Lowe. The Adelaide-based Aranda artist took out the prize with You and me, us never part, a pair of roughly textured clay vessels interlaced with soft raffia. The work, Lowe says, reflects “the contradictions in all of us, capable of love and hate, pain and joy”.

Unlike previous editions, which focused on specific design streams like ceramics or furniture design, this year’s Prize brings together designers working across fields like metalwork, glass, ceramics, furniture, lighting, woodwork and jewellery. It captures the depth and breadth of emerging Australian design, often reaching well beyond the country’s traditional design capitals.

“There are incredible designer-makers who live and reside in remote communities, and the principal objective for their practice is ensuring that the material knowledge and embedded understanding and storytelling is passed on from one generation to the next,” says LeAmon. “They play a vital role in enlivening traditional cultural practice and bringing it into the present day.”

The work of Tiwi designer Walter Brooks exemplifies this. His work, Wangatunga Jirtaka Jilamara – a collection of 10 folded bark baskets with sawfish design – draws on cultural heritage and community knowledge. The traditional stringybark tunga bags, painted in ceremonial Jilamara style, were created with guidance from senior Tiwi artists Kenny Brown and Pedro Wonaeamirri.

On the other side of tradition, industrial designer and electronic music artist Jay Jermyn explores design’s future with Veh, standing lamp. The piece combines borosilicate glass, 3D-printed dragon fruits and cast aluminium into something simultaneously functional and futuristic. “He’s known for designing sci-fi-infused lamps,” says LeAmon. “This particular work has an animistic quality – it looks like it could walk away. Imagine this is a deity in a future world where both machine and biology converge.”

The dialogue between tradition and innovation runs throughout the exhibition. With his experimental cooktop Canteen and chairs, furniture designer Andrew Carvolth reaches into the deep pockets of Australiana to come up with a design that is both forward-thinking and indebted to the past. “Andrew has a deep fascination and love for vernacular design,” LeAmon says. “This is him trying to reconceive a barbeque. What could be more Australian than the barbeque?” With hub caps from a 1956 FE Holden and aluminium castings from Australia’s Collins-class submarines as building materials, Carvolth has created a uniquely Australian incarnation of the humble barbie.

The rest of the field is just as ambitious: lamps of fabric and buttons representing families; cast-metal cabinets designed to provoke reflection; dining tables crafted from rescued warehouse pallets; and shelves made from reclaimed bluestone that merge symbolism with everyday function. Despite the changing career landscape for designer-makers, the 2025 Rigg Design Prize proves that Australia’s next generation is every bit as inventive, thoughtful and daring as those who came before.

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of the National Gallery of Victoria. The Rigg Design Prize 2025 is showing from now until February 1, 2026, at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Entry is free.