Exploring domestic architecture through art: Esther Stewart

For many people, domestic architecture fades into the background – but for artist Esther Stewart, the field is a treasure trove of inspiration and inquiry. With a practice that comprises diverse materials, scales and typologies, Esther has developed a distinctive visual language that abstracts elements of domestic architecture. Her vibrant compositions reference building elements like awnings and balustrades in bold geometries, forms and colours.

Esther Stewart at work.

Image: Alan Weedon

Esther has always been interested in making things. She struggled to decide between pursuing art or architecture at university, ultimately studying sculpture at the Victorian College of Arts and earning a bachelor with first-class honours. But architecture still plays a vital role in her career: “That freedom to explore a second field of reference is where I started getting a sense of the work I would like to make,” Esther says. In her practice, she explores the built domestic spaces she encounters, taking an architect-like project-based approach. “I love having a problem to solve or a brief to think about,” she says.

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Esther Stewart, Painted ladies (Bedroom I) ; Painted ladies (Bedroom II) (2022) showing at Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions at ACCA. Courtesy of the artist, Sarah Cottier Gallery and Station.

Image: Andrew Curtis

One such problem arose in the form of her unfulfilled desire to make awnings for her 1960s Brunswick flat. The building’s body corporate set a precedent prohibiting them, and Esther wondered, “If that precedent hadn’t happened, what would the possibilities be?” Her response emerged through her practice as Painted Ladies (2022), a commission for Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions at ACCA. The series comprised four multicoloured, operable vinyl awnings that project from walls or hang over thresholds. Esther also incorporated collages of previous works about the apartment, which she and architect Murray Barker renovated in 2020; reinterpreting its original era, Esther and Murray embraced the nostalgia of its 1960s design with muted colours, figured stone and graphic terrazzo.

Esther will finish her master’s degree in architecture in 2023, further building on her interest in architecture and informing her work in public art. Planned for Sydney Metro’s new Crows Nest Station, her latest public commission will feature two large ceramic tile murals with compositions and materiality that draw on local architectural features. Esther is producing the ceramics with Bendigo Pottery and, in a departure from her usual process of digitally rendering colour, has developed 12 tile types and 12 glazes. “It’s the first time I’ve made tiles, and it’s been lovely to make something that is less controllable,” she says.

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Stewart’s bold geometric designs were featured in Valentino’s Fall 2015 menswear collection.

Image: Courtesy of Valentino, Yannis Vlamos

This novel experience augments Esther’s vast and varied catalogue from the past decade, over the course of which her work has been featured in numerous shows and galleries around the world. She has completed wall murals for Bendigo Hospital, Monash University and a Chenchow Little apartment; collaborated with fashion giant Valentino; and created a custom carpet for Hearth Studio. Esther also used her home as a model for The space has been created for something to happen (2019) – also exhibited at Melbourne Now 2023 – at Gertrude Glasshouse, where the tent-like fabric installation altered the scale and materiality of the architecture and blurred the distinctions between interior and exterior. Her next solo exhibition will be held at Sydney’s Sarah Cottier Gallery in 2023.

While Esther explores domestic architecture with a depth that professionals will find rewarding, her vibrant compositions are also accessible and engaging for laypeople. Drawing on the familiar language of the built domestic environment, she abstracts and presents forms, colours and geometries in ways that inspire greater thought about the places and spaces we inhabit each day.