Objects, oddities and instinct.

Little within his home has been assembled to a rigid plan, a fact that was once pointed out to him publicly, and by someone qualified to notice. “I remember, maybe ten years or so ago, I was living out on a farm in central west New South Wales. It was a beautiful spring morning, and I looked across my living room which was painted a deep shade of blue, and the Gio Ponti chairs were there and some Gaetano Pesce things and so on, and I just took a picture and posted it to Instagram.

“And a then-rising but now renowned interior designer, who might be called David Flack, posted ‘nice pieces’ in response. And what he meant was, dude, you’ve got some great stuff, but nothing works together.”

“Dave was spot-on, and I kind of take that as a badge of honour.” Stephen laughs, explaining that the things he gathers are chosen for reasons he doesn’t try to account for, or particularly want to.

They speak “to something weird about my own psyche,” as he puts it. Some pieces have accrued value over the years, but that was never the reason they were acquired. His identity as a non-nostalgic person comes in handy too, for someone who’s moved as often as he has. “I’m not attached to place. Things travel with me, with all of us. And so they incarnate a moment in time.” Those moments have included twenty years in Paris, several in New York, the farm, and now Alexandria; a home intimate enough that it demanded clarity on what came and what stayed behind.

“Condensing things to come into a much smaller residence was a really, really great process of editing. I loved it,” he says, before adding, in the interests of “full disclosure”, that he does have a storage place across the road.

Stephen can tell you where he was standing when he acquired most of the objects around him. “I remember exactly where I was when I encountered the Gaetano Pesce set of stacking tables or the Serge Mouille lamp from 1953, which is such a classic, but to find it in the Paris flea market in its original condition…” 

“They all have moments that are memories.”

Some also come with friendships attached. The ceramic sconce is by Ben Mazey, a Melbourne artist he has come to know well. “I would sort of jokingly call it a future relic. It has a much posher name than that, but I can never remember it,” he admits.

The rosewood table, handmade in Torino, is a favourite for its ambiguity. “It could be from the 1910s, it could be from the 1930s, it could be the 1980s. It’s where I spend so much of my time, and it’s the place where most of my thinking happens.” For a man whose ethos embraces many beliefs, it’s a fitting base for daily operations.

Others are clearly products of their time, like the lamp any design aficionado would recognise on sight, designed by Achille Castiglioni with his brother and manufactured in 1962, Stephen’s birth year. “It is at once incredibly simple – a crenelated plinth topped by a parabolic glass bowl – and refined. Just beautiful.”

Then there are the ones where the magic is in the mismatch, like the wall of art he cannot account for, and does not particularly want to. “Who knows why we gather things around us, but this is a wall that just speaks to me psychologically,” 

“There’s something light and airy and a little bit macabre. Who knows what that all means? But it’s a pleasure to pass by every day.”

What links these objects is deeper than a scheme. “They’re all quite human in scale. There’s an intimacy, there’s a gentleness, there’s kind of a slight melancholia to them. There’s something in everything that evokes part of your story.”

That connection is partly what takes him to Sydney Contemporary each year. In his view, the art is the occasion, and the people are the reason. “What I’m looking forward to – as well as seeing new work by some of the country’s most brilliant talents – is reconnecting with the people  who gather there, because everyone’s excited to see one another again,” he says.

Among them are 500 artists from more than 100 galleries across nine countries, converging on Carriageworks this year, for the fair’s tenth edition. The energy spills across Eveleigh and out to the hotels in town. “It’s spring. Everyone’s coming out of winter. That’s a cultural moment that’s really important in Sydney,” he muses.

And in the crowd, Stephen will be there, collecting or accumulating.

Sydney Contemporary is Australasia’s premier art fair, held at Carriageworks, Eveleigh, from Thursday 3rd to Sunday 6th September, 2026.

Enjoy 20% off Art Night, Friday Night and Any Day tickets to Sydney Contemporary with the code BresicWhitney20 - click here to secure yours. Offer ends August 30.