Following the announcement of the 2025 Rigg Design Prize, we spoke with four of the makers redefining the possibilities of contemporary design: Alfred Lowe, Claudia Lau, Marcel Hoogstad Hay and Hamish Donaldson.
What emerges across these conversations is a portrait of Australian design grounded in sensitivity and intention, each installation instinctively guided by personal stories. From Alfred Lowe’s narrative vessels drawn from memory and Country, to Claudia Lau’s study of embodied histories of glaze, Marcel Hoogstad Hay’s sculptural balance, and Hamish Donaldson’s deep precision in form, each practice reveals a deep attunement to process and place.
Winner of the 2025 Rigg Design Prize, Alfred Lowe approaches clay simultaneously as vessel and storyteller, shaping works that chart the contours of Central Australia’s landscape and his own cross-cultural identity.
Raised in Alice Springs and surrounded by art from an early age, and with a deep maternal influence, Lowe recalls visiting the Araluen Art Centre and being captivated by a monumental vase that mirrored the scale he now works at. “I grew up really appreciating art and the effect it can have on not just a single person but an entire community,” he says. He found in the medium a language equal parts grounding and expansive. “One of my key goals in my practice is to give each work a sense of individuality. Part of that process is giving the work a history to draw from, lending my memories to each piece.”
His winning work, ‘You and me, us never part,’ honours the community he has built around him, a love letter rendered in clay. “Tension within this cross-cultural space does exist, but I find my recent work explores the joy in these relationships,” Lowe reflects. “The world at the moment tries to force us into binaries… but embracing community means embracing the people around you and accepting who they are.”
Lowe’s forms are bold, playful, and sensitive to context. “I make work that brings me joy and fills my cup, and I think people should take the same approach when placing it,” he says. Shaped by his mother’s artistry and the stories of Country, Lowe’s work continues to expand in form and feeling. Beyond the prize, Lowe’s practice continues to evolve, shaped by curiosity and a lifetime of possibility, always reaching toward what clay might still have to say.
Striking in their clarity and refinement, Hamish Donaldson’s glass vessels rise like sacred instruments, their engraved surfaces shifting subtly with the light. In this Rigg Design Prize installation, form becomes a way of touching the unseen. “My work is inspired by temple spaces as places we can connect with the inner and unseen realities,” he says. “I embedded alchemical symbols that stem from the hermetic traditions and used Cymatic patterns—the visual representation of sound—to represent some of the hidden realities and the beauty they hold beyond our perception.”
Each vessel is a study in endurance. Working at a large scale in blown glass demanded both precision and persistence; it took several attempts before the final three forms emerged. Once complete, each piece was engraved with intricate geometric patterns, a process that required equal measures of control and surrender.
The refinement of the finished work conceals its difficulty, the repetition of making revealing a kind of rhythm within the process itself. Donaldson describes the project as a turning point, one that allowed him to extend his technical and conceptual reach. “This opportunity really helped me elevate my practice and push some boundaries,” he reflects, noting how it reaffirmed his belief in the “magical qualities” of glass and its capacity to hold light, vibration and meaning.
Working between Melbourne and Jingdezhen, China, Claudia Lau has built a practice shaped by material intention and collaborative curiosity. The past year has stretched both. “It’s been a busy year, developing work for both Sydney Contemporary and the Rigg Design Prize,” she says. “Being selected for the Rigg Design was an honour and with that carried a strong sense of pressure and expectation.”
In her installation ‘A Kind of Whiteness’, Lau adopted an inverted approach to ceramics, positioning glaze as the predominant body to examine and challenge the limits of whiteware and the perceptions of whiteness, both culturally and aesthetically.
For Lau, this process becomes a site of purposeful blurring, where opposing ideas and inherited meanings converge. “The work is about the in-between; between designer and craftsperson, art and design, functional and decorative, edition and production, clay and glaze, Eastern and Western, familiar and abstract, and object and interior.”
When engaging with her work, it’s easy to be drawn to its variables—each tile harmonising between chance and exactness. Legacy feels inherent in these forms. When asked to imagine what someone might think if, a thousand years from now, they unearthed one of her tiles, she recalled a visit to Jingdezhen’s Ghost Market, where she found a saggar bowl with a collapsed porcelain dish inside. “The failed piece was from the Song Dynasty, dug from an ancient kiln site,” she says. “I collected it as a tactile reference to a moment in ceramic history.” Reflecting on her own practice, she adds, “I hope that if my tiles were discovered, one would consider the history of the piece, the materials, process and find curiosity in the repetitive yet individual nature of the tiles. It could be a portrait of a time, place, process and my practice.”
Marcel Hoogstad Hay’s installation unfolds as a constellation of mirrored glass elements that chart the phases of the moon. “I’m fascinated by astronomical phenomena and time,” he says. “Creating a work that would illustrate the different phases of the moon while highlighting the temporal nature of the lunar cycle ticked a lot of boxes for me.” The work’s subtle gradation in scale and spacing transforms the gallery into a reflective field, where glass becomes a register of light and movement.
Exhibiting at the NGV marked a milestone for Hoogstad Hay. He describes the experience as invaluable, one that expanded his practice and sense of ambition. The project demanded both technical resolve and openness to experimentation, reinforcing his desire to work at larger scales and continue exploring the potential of blown glass as an expressive medium.
The process included regular dialogue with curator Simone LeAmon. “Simone gives a lot of valuable feedback and likes to push you. I think she really strives to draw the best out of people,” he says.
Astronomy remains his enduring reference point, grounding his investigations in wonder and luminosity. The work continues to evolve through this lens, expanding his exploration of light, time and perception into new scales and possibilities.
