Reimagining the Clubhouse | Melbourne Design Week Intervention on Sport, Space & Belonging

It’s been a busy few months at Found HQ.  Back in May we hosted the closing party for Melbourne Design Week 2025 . At Runner Up roof top bar nestled atop Collingwood Yards, we hosted Reimagining the Clubhouse , an exhibition and intervention, curated by Found Golf, Good Sport, and Katie Kelso.

This wasn’t a nostalgic nod to clubroom history. It was something sharper and multi-layered, an exploration of the clubhouse not just as a place, but as a symbol. Ten artists and designers came together to present works that interrogated how these spaces preserve and perpetuate ideas around inclusion, exclusion, power, nostalgia, identity, and access. At its core, Reimagining the Clubhouse was a design-led reflection on how sports spaces shape and are shaped by cultural codes.

ARTISTS CREATING SPACE FOR NEW CONVERSATIONS

Each participating artist interpreted the theme through their own lens, offering critical, poetic, and playful reflections on sport, clubhouses, their architecture and codified behaviour.

THE DESIGNERS

Darcy Vescio, AFL player and artist, explored the emotional architecture of sport through a series of text-based works: Devastated, Next Year, Choked, Losers, and Almost Won. Pieces that sit somewhere between resilience and heartbreak.

Damien Wright & Tony Birch collaborated on Country-club, a work examining the tensions between colonial legacies and Indigenous exclusion in historical clubhouse spaces.

Charlie White’s Ghost Floor Lamp used sculptural lighting to bring new life to an old sports towel.

Millie Savage & Kate Rohde flipped notions of victory with their baroque-inspired #1 Participant Medal (inside) Victorious Cabinet, a maximalist rework of the trophy cabinet.

Maddison Kitching explored environmental themes with Earth Casting, reflecting on exploitation of Australian iconography through sporting codes and in particular award ceremonies.

Maliek Njoroge reimagined club culture through a global lens with his Chess Dhurrie series — handwoven pieces symbolising strategic movement and belonging.

Locki Humphrey’s Upholstered Monoblock Chair was a nod to the understated design of community sports clubs, reupholstered with care and tactility.

Ben Jones gave new life to an old trophy, painted in a soccerball-esque pattern; the work titled Own Goal alludes to a self enshrined award.

EXPANDING THE CLUBHOUSE EXPERIENCE

The exhibition extended beyond visual works. A designer floor talk invited deeper dialogue with the artists, while a trophy-making competition saw participants work in groups to make trophies in a highly competitive and creative play down. And of course there was a uniform store, stocked by yours truly and a sausage sizzle to keep the crowds fed. DJs Elsie and DJ Earl Grey created the perfect clubhouse backdrop, more sonic than a reinterpretation of club theme songs.

WHY IT MATTERS

As sport grows increasingly commodified and design remains a tool of both access and gatekeeping, Reimagining the Clubhouse asked us to slow down and take a second look. Not to abandon the clubhouse, but to rethink it, invite in new memories, new bodies, new futures.

For Found this exploration of sport through design is at the core of what we do. Reimagining The Clubhouse was an extension of our passions; art, design, sport (golf), culture, people, and music.  At Found we firmly believe that a clubhouse is not defined by trophies, or rules, but by the people who fill it - they shape what comes next.

Keep it cultural out there, whatever that means to you.

Reimagining The Clubhouse was featured in The Age , ABC Breakfast TV and Triple RRR

Event photography by Karabo Tlokotsi