Clubhouse explores the role of sport and sporting clubs as sites of cultural production. The exhibition brings together designers working with sports materials, designers who are professional athletes, those reinterpreting sports-related objects, and practitioners examining their personal relationships to sport. From golf to surfing, gym equipment to dartboards, sport is reconsidered as both a cultural phenomenon and a deeply creative form of expression.
The group exhibition seeks to foreground the revival of the clubhouse, reflecting contemporary values and evolving design aesthetics. Presented by Found Golf and Up There for NGV Melbourne Design Week, the exhibition offers a nostalgic yet joyful reflection on sport and clubhouses as spaces of possibility and forgotten dreams.
We visited the studios of six designers who are rethinking what sport means to them.
Briony Wright
Briony is a writer, editor and creative producer. In 2024, she cut the ribbon on her conceptual flower studio, Crushes Flowers, and now makes work across different mediums. Briony’s two-part installation combines floristry with spatial design as she draws reference from sports fields. The sand cast aluminium cone vases are replicase of the ubiquitous cone that we all ran, hopped, skipped and jumped over through childhood sport lessons. Accompanying the installation is a custom designed scent evocative of freshly cut grass.
Cody Weightman & Alessandro Calderwood
Western Bulldogs player and artist Cody collaborated with master boat builder Alessandro to create this surfboard as an exploration of sport, identity and emotional release. Constructed from highly polished stainless steel, the work transforms a functional object into a reflective sculptural form. Referencing surf culture and sporting clubrooms, the board contains a hidden locker compartment with burning incense, allowing smoke to rise through the object as a subtle gesture toward the idea of “burning off steam” through sport and shared spaces.
Damien Wright & Bonhula Yunupingu
Bonhula and Damien are long-time collaborators whose practices bridge distinct cultural worlds. Damien is a balanda (white man), while Bonhula is Yolŋu from the Gumatj clan of North East Arnhem Land, part of the world’s oldest continuous culture. Drawing on both ancient and contemporary materials, the pair’s riff on a coin reflects on the rise of symbolic capitalism across contemporary life, particularly within sport. The pair have been exhibited internationally and collected by Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Danielle Brustman
Known for her sophisticated use of colour and geometric references Danielle Brustman's studio practice encompasses interiors, furniture and lighting design, exhibition and installation. Her work has been collected by NGV. Danielle’s dartboard has no bullseye. You can’t win. The work draws on her memories of playing darts. The hot/not dartboard proposes two options. One of inclusion and one of exclusion. The dartboard is her irreverent take on the polarising aspects of clubhouses and what it means to belong.
Darcy Vescio & Locki Humphrey
Darcy is a celebrated AFL player and creative. Their artistic practice is characterised by a sharp sense of humour and vibrant use of colour. Locki a furniture designer / maker approaches object design with a focus on minimal intervention, craft and sustainability. Their process is driven by exploration of material, colour, texture. Collaborating for the first time this courtside bench captures a moment on the precipice – a moment when the call could go either way, a moment when you really just need a fucking break.
Safa El Samad
Safa El Samad is a second-generation Lebanese settler living and working on Wurundjeri land. Her practice sits between fashion and architecture, focusing on repair, material care and the afterlives of garments and spaces. Men Not Allowed is a site-specific work designed to be viewed from above, reimagining the floor of the Up There store as grass and the vitrine as a platform. Through distorted running tracks and layered Arabic and English text - including “ممنوع” (“prohibited”) and “men not allowed” - the work questions access, exclusion and the gendered politics of sporting space.
