Conviction Over Comfort — Tall Poppy, Melbourne Design Week 2026

Tall Poppy Syndrome is so embedded in how Australians talk about ambition that to name an exhibition after it — to look it directly in the face — takes a particular kind of courage. Tall Poppy, part of Melbourne Design Week 2026, does exactly that. That courage is visible in the work of the fifteen Australian artists and designers gathered here.

Curated by Tiffany Jade and presented by Kelli Lundberg Art at The Studio & Co. in Moorooduc, the exhibition marks the first time Melbourne Design Week has programmed an exhibition on the Mornington Peninsula — a reminder that creative rigour is not a metropolitan inheritance. It belongs wherever the thinking runs deep.

The fifteen practices span furniture, ceramics, sculpture, glass, and lighting. Their work does not hedge. It does not soften its convictions. Together it presents a cohort that has chosen to stand for something — and to do so here, on home ground.

Fibonacci joined as principal and foundation sponsor because the values underneath this exhibition are the same ones the brand holds itself to. Small things lead to bigger things. The thinking behind the work matters more than its scale. Conviction, sustained over time, is how a design culture actually moves — and creativity with conviction can move us all forward.

The exhibition runs at Kelli Lundberg Art through 7 June 2026. As part of Melbourne Design Week, Why Tall Poppy? — a panel conversation with Fibonacci's Michael Karakolis, Gordon Tait, Mardi Doherty, Jean-Pierre Biasol, and Leisa Wharington, moderated by Tiffany Jade — takes place inside the exhibition on Sunday 24 May. Free, booking required.