Alum Spotlight: Ashley Eriksmoen '88

March 14th 2025

Ashley Eriksmoen '88 is a practitioner and practice-based researcher in critical design and contemporary craft practice who mobilizes salvaged materials through bricolage processes to critique industrial hyperproduction and its embedded systems. Over the past decade, she has been reconfiguring discarded furniture to challenge conventional practices that drive extractivism, waste, and environmental degradation.

Originally from California, Ashley immigrated to Australia in 2012, where she has been lecturing in craft, design, and sculpture at Australian National University's School of Art & Design ever since. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Geological Sciences (1992) from Boston College, as well as a Certificate in Fine Woodworking (1998) from College of the Redwoods and a Master of Fine Arts (2000) in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She is currently a PhD candidate undertaking her practice-based research at the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design.

Her work exhibits internationally, most recently at the 2023 NGV Triennial in Melbourne and the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG). The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) commissioned her work Fell for the Triennial—an exhibition attended by over a million visitors. Fell consists of a life-sized tree stump and log, constructed from salvaged furniture collected from Canberra’s streets. By reconstructing fragmented materials into a form oscillating between tree, timber, and waste, the work exposes the instability of the waste cycle and the entanglements of consumerism, extraction, and colonial legacies in material production.

Ashley Jameson Eriksmoen, Fell, 2023. Wood, oil stain and varnish. Photo credit: National Gallery of Victoria

Ashley’s work is held in major collections, including the RISD Museum (Providence, RI, USA), the Museum of Art in Wood (Philadelphia, PA, USA), and the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, AUS). She has received numerous awards, including the Clarence Prize for Excellence in Furniture Design (2021), the Australian Furniture Design Award (2022), and the Andrea Stretton Memorial Invitational Award at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi (2022). She is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery in Melbourne.

Ashley is currently undertaking a heritage project for Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School (SCEGGS), creating a large-scale wall-mounted artwork from salvaged timber components of a four-story staircase balustrade (circa 1904) from Wilkinson House, a heritage building under renovation. This project offers a new approach to heritage preservation and interpretation through material transformation.

In 2025, she will present a solo exhibition at Sophie Gannon Gallery from May 17 – June 7, 2025, coinciding with Melbourne Design Week. We are so proud of all Ashley has accomplished all around the world!

To learn more about Ashley's work, visit: