Feature... MAKE Award: Spotlight on South Australia
The MAKE Award: Biennial Prize for Innovation in Australian Craft and Design is a new national award celebrating innovation in contemporary craft and design, this year we shine a light on the 5 outstanding South Australian finalists.
The MAKE Award is an Australian Design Centre initiative founded in 2023 with the support of a generous philanthropist. It is the richest non- acquisitive prize for craft and design in Australia. The winner will receive a cash prize of $35,000 and a second prize of $10,000 will be awarded.
A total of 197 entries were received from artists working across the fields of ceramics, glass, furniture, metal, jewellery, textiles and fibre. The judges selected 36 finalists, including 5 South Australian practitioners.
Kirsten Coelho, in a deep founded sheltering, 2025.Photographer: Grant Hancock
KIRSTEN COELHO
Kirsten Coelho’s work reflects the relationship between objects and the spaces they inhabit. Her work is often driven by the intersection of domestic use and historical context; how objects can embody the cultural narratives of the past.
Coelho’s piece in a deep founded sheltering focusses on the artist’s continued engagement with the narratives contained within the story of the Odyssey. The work brings together a suite of objects – a vignette, imagining an interior and exterior landscape simultaneously.
Further to this is the use of porcelain and terracotta together in one work — two clays with very distinct histories and visual impact. Porcelain, speaks to ideas of wealth, connoisseurship, quietude, and the aesthetics of restraint. Terracotta on the other hand carries links to domestic use and the tactile immediacy of the handmade. The juxtaposition of these clays allows for a dialogue between the fragile and the robust and between ideas of objects being seen as high and low art.
Jake Rollins, SOFA 3744, 2025. Photographer: Connor Patterson.
JAKE ROLLINS
Jake Rollins is a furniture designer and maker with an interest in overlooked materials and inventive processes. His approach is driven by a broad curiosity, often resulting in works that subvert orthogonal approaches to making.
SOFA 3744 is a sofa made from 3744 golf balls and tensioned cord. It’s the latest expression of GolfWeave - a body of work that uses golf balls as beads, and principles of triaxial weaving to create human scaled, functional objects.
Referencing the classic sofa silhouette, the work reflects an evolution of technique highlighting a progression from object-as- artefact towards object-as- furniture. SOFA 3744 carries all the same musculature and definition of a cushy sofa and adapts them into a triaxial reality.
While much of Rollin’s work is bound in the importance of the waste crisis and mathematical rules that govern surface geometries, the resulting object is, quite simply, fun.
Bolaji Teniola, Amphora, 2024. Photographer: Alexander Robertson.
BOLAJI TENIOLA
Bolaji Teniola is an interdisciplinary designer developing pieces at the intersection of art, craft, and design. Inspired by materials and guided by the process, Teniola finds joy in allowing the process to unearth pragmatic solutions
Taking aesthetic cues from its namesake, Amphora looks to subvert the intentions of the amphorae. Where the amphorae of the Neolithic and Bronze ages were mass-manufactured and hard-wearing for transporting liquids and dry goods, Amphora is bespoke and visually ephemeral, with the material taking centre stage and acting as decoration
Amphora moves away from a function-driven form to embrace the beauty and reuse of the timber waste material it comprises. Hand-planned timber shavings are used to create the voluminous form of Amphora.
This work is a demonstration of an innovative new building technique and is the first in what Teniola hopes to be an extensive series of larger works produced from waste timber material.
Caren Elliss, Lumen, 2025 Photographer: Michael Haines
CAREN ELLISS
Describing herself as an Industrial Designer/Maker, Caren Elliss is known for producing thoughtful, original furniture
Lumen was driven by a desire to experiment with more immediate digital techniques and to adapt making processes around Elliss’s chronic illness and recovery from surgery.
Elliss aimed to reintroduce a playful quality into her practice, focusing on what might give people a lasting sense of happiness when engaging with the work. This approach allowed for a slower, more deliberate exploration of ideas, leading to a new sense of creative freedom.
Sustainability was central, with the work designed for minimal waste, use of recycled content, and easy disassembly for material reuse. The piece was produced using 3D printing—previously only used in Elliss’s practice for prototyping. This required learning new Solidworks techniques, refining surface finishes, and operating a larger, more capable printer to achieve the final organic forms.
Lotte Schwerdtfeger, Form Study I, 2025. Photographer: Photo by the artist
LOTTE SCHWERDTFEGER
Lotte Schwerdtfeger’s studio practice explores material transformations and natural phenomena. Schwerdtfeger primarily works with clay; coiling and pinching both functional and sculptural works - combining tendrils of research spanning historical pottery traditions.
Form Study I is inspired by sessile invertebrates, blending elements of animal and object design.
This self-illuminating sculpture features sponge and coral-like forms, a recurring motif in the artist’s work.
The form is built from thick clay coils marked by the artist’s fingerprints, mapping human scale onto the work. Each section is added at the edge of the clay’s stability to create freestanding, organic shapes. The materials used link directly to marine life: sponges form with silicon dioxide, corals with calcium carbonate – both also found in ceramics and glazes. Driven by ecological concerns, the work brings the fragile beauty of deep-sea life into a domestic space, inviting a closer connection to the non-human world.
The exhibition opens at Australian Design Centre (NSW) on 10 October where the winner will announced and runs to 22 November 2025 and will then tour to JamFactory (SA) from 5 December to 12 April 2026.