Another young Irish designer featured in the Generation exhibition in NCG, Kilkenny as part of Design Week, Colm Keller has just finished his Masters in Design in Gothenburg, Sweden, and I've been a fan of his work for quite a while now. I first spotted Made by Eimear (pictured above) back in 2008 when it reached the final of the then Habitat and House and Home Student Design Awards. "Made by Eimear" is so-named because its design is inspired by Keller's sister Eimear, and is a really quirky, charming piece of furniture.
If you get to Generation, it's Keller's most recent piece that you'll see there: Presence in Absence, pictured below. Presence in Absence simultaneously deals with two issues: the nature of long distance relationships, and the digital technology we use to communicate. A digital scrapbook comes in the form of two usb sticks joined together which must be cut apart for the couple to use them. They can be clipped to your clothes or worn as a pendant, and when the couple return to each other they can plug them both into a porcelain hub to share the files they've each saved in their scrapbooks. Presence in Absence brings new rituals to a relationship and new value to the tools we use to communicate.
