Cloud Vortex, 2023

Jonathan Ben-Tovim is a Melbourne-based artist and lighting designer with a background in industrial design. His experimental lighting and furniture design practice explores the intricacies of the global industrial economy. Ben-Tovim’s designs seek to question materials, processes and supply chains implicated in the delivery of commercially mass-produced goods to uncover counter narratives. His best known Crash lighting series is made from metal salvaged from car yards giving life to disregarded industrial materials.

Ben-Tovim’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally at Dutch Design Week; Dubai Design Week; Salon del Mobile, Milan; and Melbourne Design Week. Ben-Tovim’s work is part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s collection. Jonathan Ben-Tovim’s Cloud Vortex takes inspiration from nature, and the sometimes windy and blustering weather of Melbourne. A surreal vortex of repurposed car bonnets takes on a dynamic arrangement of movement and life, creating different compositions depending on the viewing angle. From the Ground Floor looking directly up, the work seems like a flat spiral. From an elevated perspective the three-dimensional space form of Cloud Vortex takes flight.

Responding to the colours of the environmental light and lit up warmly from within, the intention of the piece is to engage the imagination of passers-by; “to evoke a moment of wonder where they will stop and look up from their intended path”. Ben-Tovim’s work is finished in a matte white powder coat paint that subtly changes with exterior natural light, responding to and reflecting the outside environment.