THE WAY WE LIVE
Don Cameron, by way of an exclusive invitation into his Point Piper apartment, proves there can be life after mid-century modernism after all.
Radical eclecticism inside a Point Piper apartment proves there is life after mid-century modernism.
Don Cameron walks through his space with all the grace of a Giacometti sculpture. Which is just as well, since the interior of his apartment on the ground floor of a 1930s tower is awash with the flotsam of his travels. Twice a year, the boy from Dubbo spends several weeks in Europe – mostly Italy, but also Belgium, Paris, Holland – scouring markets and fairs, visiting dealers in search of rare furniture, lighting and objects with which to fill a shipping container, maybe two, and send by slow boat back to Australia. These rare pieces are his stock and trade, the goods he supplies to a small but growing number of private clients who share his taste for the truly exceptional.
Nowhere in any of his many rooms is there a Jacobson Series 7 chair, an Eames lounge and ottoman, an LC3 Chaise à Grand Confort. Not even a Noguchi Coffee Table. (I once asked him if he would broker a pair of my Gio Ponti Dezza armchairs. He just smiled, quietly declined.)
It’s not that Don Cameron disdains mid-century classics; his mind is simply elsewhere. A graduate of Visual Communication at University of Technology Sydney, he completed his studies at London’s Central Saint Martins College of Art, from 1996-98. The years are key: New Labour was barely nascent, London still harboured true grit, the creative industries were flourishing, unfettered. This was a time when Alexander Mcqueen and Isabella Blow ruled the roost (Galliano having fled to Paris) with their aggressive take on sexuality, power and beauty, their filmic approach to fashion as extravaganza. Soho was still filled with sex shops – and film editing suites. It was in one of these that Don Cameron was dubbing his third film, Paradisiac (the first was called Sadisteria – “between Sadism and hysteria” – the second, Distensione) when it was spotted by a couple of producers from the record label, UTH Records. Impressed, they approached him. “And before I knew it, I was directing three music videos back-to-back in three weeks.” Including one for Moloko’s Indigo, another for Blur’s Music Is My Radar – which was recently nominated one of the Top 100 British music videos of the last 50 years, by the British Film Institute.
Around the same time, he’d moved into a flat shared with furniture dealer Claudio Holdener, who had a shop at Camden Market. One of the most respected dealers on the planet today, it was Holdener who revealed to him the power of design to imbue emotion. “Claudio exposed me to rare historic design. Italian, Swiss, these shapes and forms and materials I had never seen before. In my videos I liked to work in cycloramas, in flat wall set ups, to make these kind of evocative tableaux. And so I began working with Claudio to prop my work. I really enjoyed playing with the expressive potential of design in video. I was never too much interested in narrative or dialogue or humour.”
In the same way, his interior work is best understood as a series of tableaux. “As you move through a home,” he explains, walking me from room to room across dark marquetry floors, “the way you use lighting, edit a sequence, cut away, action, combine close shots and long shots, you create a kind of beat, beat, beat.” A partial view from a vestibule through an arched doorway into
“My home acts as a film set, a sketch pad for ideas where constantly evolving scenes are played out. The pieces from different periods become characters in a narrative that in turn find their way into collections, projects and the homes of clients.”
“As you move through a home, the way you use lighting, edit a sequence, cut away, action, combine close shots and long shots, you create a kind of beat.”
PREVIOUS | DECORATIVE PRESSED STEEL PANELS, FRANCE 1970S. AFRA & TOBIA SCARPA ‘NICTEA’ PENDANT FLOS 1962. GOTHIC CARVED WOODEN CHRIST, 14TH CENTURY. DIAPASON CONCRETE LOUNGE BY GIOVANNI DE LUCCHI AND TITTI SARACINO, 1973. OPPOSITE | DON CAMERON IN HIS OFFICE, SEATED ON AN AFRA & TOBIA SCARPA OFFICE CHAIR FOR UNIFOR/MOLTENI, ITALY 1975. ON THE OSVALDO BORSANI DESK, TECNO, ITALY 1950S, A LAVINIA LAMP BY MASAYAKI KUROSAWA FOR ARTEMIDE, ITALY 1965, A SPINNAKER TABLE LAMP BY CONSTANTINO CORSINI & GEORGE WISKERMAN FOR STILNOVA, ITALY 1968. ABOVE | LARI LAMP BY ANGELO MANGIAROTTI FOR ARTEMIDE, ITALY 1978. ON THE VITTORIO DASSI (ITALY 1950S) SIDEBOARD, BLACK BAKELITE SCIENTIFIC CRYSTAL MODELS (AUSTRIA, 1930S) AND NATURAL CORAL. PAINTING, 3 (1969) BY JEAN FIROUX. CERAMIC MOSAIC TABLETOP, ITALY 1950S.
a dining enclave, the way that perspective shifts as you move through and around rooms, each angle very carefully considered, each pan anticipated. Incidentally, there is a magnificent view down the harbour and right out to the Heads. Very incidentally.
“My home is a very special space for me,” he says, “both primary and essential. In equal parts inventory, creative source and staging area, it acts as a film set, a sketch pad for ideas where constantly evolving scenes are played out. The pieces from different periods become characters in a narrative that in turn find their way into collections, projects and the homes of clients.”
The private clients are just that, private. Suffice to say they’re mostly artists and musicians, an actor or two, boldfaced. As for the projects, the most notable is Canberra’s Hotel Hotel for which he was originally commissioned to source, acquire, restore and place vintage design throughout the development. That initial remit soon mutated into designing lighting, cabinetry and surface finishes for all 68 rooms. Rooms which often bring to my mind the interior of the Los Angeles home of Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and his wife Renée (Patricia Arquette) in David Lynch’s 1997 neo-noir, Lost Highway. The tunneling hallways, the shadowy lighting arcs from the bedside lamps, the topsy-turvy surfaces – crenelated clay rendering on walls, grass wallpaper on ceilings, the stacked volumes of oriented strand board cabinetry. It’s not that the rooms are sinister, just dramatic. “They are like 68 little film sets,” he says.
Collecting and dealing in historical design is not simply a matter of fetishizing the past. “I like being out in the world, being around dealers and collectors, hearing the stories that are embedded in the objects themselves, how they’ve passed from hand to hand. The kind of things I’m interested in don’t even hit the internet, they circulate in a very specific orbit. I am above all interested in authenticity, character and originality.”