Constructing the Invisible

Constructing the Invisible: Systems, Structures, and Spaces New works from Jay Kochel, Jacob Leary, Zac Koukoravas and James Parrett

This exhibition is part of Melbourne Design Week 2025, an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Focusing on materiality, perception, and technological innovation, this exhibition investigates how design principles - organisation, repetition, structure, and transformation – can reveal deeper insights into human experience, identity, and the built environment. It’s core question is “How can design serve as a lens to visualise and experience systems that are typically invisible or imperceptible?” These systems range from digital algorithms and architectural forms to cultural patterns and psychological frameworks. Each artist engages with this theme using a diversity of materials and methods that bridge traditional and digital techniques.

JACOB LEARY Jacob Leary’s multidisciplinary practice explores the intersections of digital systems, organic growth, and material form, constructing intricate, algorithm-driven worlds that blur the boundaries between art, technology, and ecology. His works—spanning sculpture, video, installation, painting, and print—are generated through a process that fuses digital drawing with handcrafted assemblage, mimicking the logic of natural and technological systems. Emerging from two-dimensional "territories," Leary’s forms evolve into complex, topographic structures—landscapes of pattern, density, and dynamic expansion.

By integrating systems thinking into his creative process, Leary’s work reflects the interconnectedness of ecological and technological transformation. His compositions mirror the self-organising principles of natural ecosystems and the structured logic of digital design, proposing new ways of shaping sustainable and responsive environments.

Holding a PhD and MFA from the Hobart School of Art, Leary has exhibited widely, with notable projects including DarkMofo, Hobart Current: Liberty, and QANTAS Curates. His work is held in major public and private collections, and he has received numerous grants and prizes, including the John Fries Memorial Prize and an Australia Council Grant for Emerging Artists. Through his practice, Leary investigates how art can serve as both a system and a living ecology, continuously adapting and evolving.

JAMES PARRETT James Parrett’s sculptural practice reimagines the built environment, exploring the fluidity of form through his striking, large-scale geometric works. Working primarily in stainless steel and painted aluminium, Parrett dissects and reconfigures radial arcs to reveal dynamic compositions that challenge perceptions of space, structure, and movement. His sculptures transform rigid geometry into fluid, evolving forms, suggesting that even the most structured elements of our surroundings can be adaptable and open to reinvention.

A major award-winning artist, Parrett has exhibited in every significant sculpture prize in Australia and has completed numerous public commissions, including the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Memorial at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. He has twice won major national sculpture prizes and been a finalist in the McClelland Contemporary Sculpture Award five times. His work is held in major collections, including the High Court of Australia and Monash University.

By interrogating the intersection of art, design, and architecture, Parrett’s sculptures offer a vision of future urban and public spaces where form is not static but dynamic—an invitation to reimagine the way we move through and engage with the world around us.

JAY KOCHEL Jay Kochel’s practice explores the immaterial as material, visualising the imperceptible through intricate machine drawings that transform air into form. Inspired by Japanese concepts of meditation and perception, his ‘air studies’ map ephemeral structures, capturing the transient nature of breath, voids, and the spaces in between. By inverting notions of solidity and impermanence, Kochel’s work suggests a deeper engagement with the unseen forces that shape our world—both physically and emotionally.

His process involves sculpting air-filled skins, digitally scanning them, and translating the data into delicate mesh drawings via a modified plotter. These ethereal compositions reveal an interconnectedness between presence and absence, offering a meditation on healing, replenishment, and adaptability.

Based in Canberra, Kochel holds a Doctorate in Philosophy (Visual Art) from the Australian National University. His research has spanned scent, sensory perception, and materiality, with residencies at the Kyoto Art Center and collaborations with scientific institutions. He has been widely recognised for his innovative approach, winning multiple awards, including the FLG Exploration Award for Emerging Artists. Through his multidisciplinary practice, Kochel invites us to reconsider the unseen forces that shape both art and life.ZAC KOUKORAVAS Zac Koukoravas’ layered acrylic paintings explore identity, transparency, and the interplay between order and chaos. Working with multiple sheets of glass and Perspex, he constructs complex visual fields where shadow, light, and depth become active participants in the narrative. His process—defined by strict parameters yet embracing chance—creates dynamic compositions that shift between structure and fluidity, reflecting the evolving nature of self-representation.

Drawing from diverse influences, including graffiti, architecture, electronic music, and political activism, Koukoravas deconstructs and reassembles elements from both natural and urban environments. His work interrogates the tensions between technology and human experience, using numerology and typology as frameworks for self-representation. By revealing and repairing narratives within algorithmic biases and surveillance culture, his practice advocates for more inclusive and transparent design in both art and society.

A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Koukoravas has received significant recognition, including the FLG Emerging Artist Award (2013) and the Best Artist Award at DenFair (2016). His work has been exhibited widely, with a sell-out debut at the Melbourne Art Fair (2014), and is held in private collections and the Justin Art House Museum Collection.