Staff Profiles

Further Details

Research Statement

Karina Clarke’s areas of expertise include interior design, furniture and object design and design management. Karina’s experience as a designer in the commercial sector gives her an acute appreciation of the market for her products. Her years of study, research and teaching both in Australia and internationally, give her a deep understanding of the cultural and social influences which shape our response to objects. This diverse background, coupled with her wit and sense of humour help her design objects with which we can engage not only physically, but emotionally. The inspiration for her work draws upon a reflection of the beauty and delight found in little things. The breadth of her design experience underpins her commitment to the collaboration or dialogue between designer, manufacturer and user which she sees as central to the development of an object for small scale production.

Karina Clarke is currently a senior lecturer in Design at the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts (COFA where she teaches Applied Object Design, Design Management and Environmental Design.

Karina holds a BA (Hons) in interior design at RMIT and is a Master of Fine Arts in furniture design from the University of Tasmanian Centre for the Arts. Her research experience includes a four-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and a partnership between COFA and Milan Politecnico exploring design driven innovation for small to medium scale enterprises.  Her commercial experience includes working as a designer for the furniture manufacturing company, Chiswell, in Sydney and for Country Road.

As a practising designer working in the areas of contemporary furniture and object design Karina Clarke’s research explores the dialogues between design, craft, and manufacturing. The wide range of contexts in which design is situated demands sophisticated analysis of collaboration for the design to be developed, produced and delivered to the market-place.

Her ideas are generated from a response to social and cultural understandings of the world we inhabit.  In order to investigate the complex and subjective relationship between the object and the viewer, Clarke recontextualizes the object’s form or function creating a new meaning. The relationship between the object and the viewer becomes mobilised, and a new experience occurs – in which the object appears slightly familiar but is understood differently according to its shifted context. Focused on defining design as a 'dialogue' Clarke creates objects that explore the perceived value of objects at an emotional, physical, and spiritual level.