Follow us
#BELLEMAGAZINE
Forgive us, but at Belle, we can’t help being seriously into beauty and talent – we appreciate being surrounded by and looking at exquisite objets and stunning imagery, and we absolutely love discovering new creative brilliance. To me, there is nothing more exciting than seeing young creatives develop their practice and attract recognition from an appreciative audience and the industry at large. That’s what has been so wonderful about the Belle Artstart competition sponsored by Belle Property and Studio Gallery Melbourne. This year the exhibition and winners’ announcement was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and our winner was Benjamin Throsby, second place was Olympia Antoniadis and third place went to Archie Tait – Archie has entered every year since the prize started and this year took out third. The youth of today cop quite a bit of flak, so it is reassuring to see perseverance and hard work prevail.
Of course, the Belle team are passionate about interior design, but we are also excited about how well-conceived interiors are complemented by equally well thought-out gardens. Our new tome – Belle’s fifth book – Australian Landscape Designers – is on sale now and was launched with a suitably verdant party at landscape designer Richard Unsworth’s fabulous Garden Life in Sydney. Richard is one of the 26 leading Australian landscape designers featured, and it was incredible to have so many of these seriously great gardeners under the same roof for one night. The gorgeous green volume is on sale now through Magshop and all good bookstores.
We have more talent to reveal on the following pages with the line-up of finalists in the 2019 Belle Coco Republic Interior Design Awards. There are some new contenders this year, and we are very excited about featuring the winners in our June/july issue – on sale May 27.
And I haven’t forgotten my promise to share an update on my Marie Kondo/the Minimalists challenge progress. Well, I have redeployed quite a few things: books have gone off to have a second life via the super-sweet little glass-fronted bookcases outside my local school; old uniforms have been sent to the school uniform shop; objets and many scented candles have been distributed to friends and family – good ones, of course! I have stuck to my mantra of only buying forever pieces so my sole purchases have been art – a piece called Shipwreck by young artist Oliver Wood that was part of Artstart and a Vanessa Stockard work from Scott Livesey Galleries called Hoop Jumping. Not surprisingly something in the title resonates with me and the painting itself is reminiscent of my nocturnal dream life – yep, who isn’t chasing Persian carpets and unicorns in their night-time meanderings…