Joshua Stevens
I’m a designer based in Naarm specialising in digital with a passion for purposeful design and creating meaningful user experiences.
GalleryProject
Otter StI think of decorating
I started making these works during a period of healing and self-reflection after ten years of not engaging with my artistic practice. Using the home as a site for my recovery, I saw an opportunity to reconnect with material again as a form of therapy, turning the dining table into my pack-away studio. Flipping the space daily from a tidy functional living area into a chaotic creative tip and back again before my partner returned home from work. Gym shorts, party singlets, old socks, cushion covers, tea towels, wrapping paper, shopping bags, Architectural Digest magazine cut outs and small objects were all gathered from my surroundings and used like paint across these elaborate cardboard structures.
In this cathartic process of sourcing, cutting, layering, assembling, gluing and arranging, I considered my selfhood in relation to home. Not only my present home, but home as a child and homes I could only aspire to. I am interested in how these deeply intimate spaces reflect their occupants, both through conscious expressions of taste in decor and display, and unwitting choices such as cleanliness and convenience. Home for me flips between comfort and dread, beauty and ugliness, wholesomeness and debauchery, elegance and kitsch, sentimentality and superficiality, control and chaos, growth and loss, all of which have influenced this body of work.
I think of my body decaying into the floor of my home
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 12 cmI think of decanting toiletries into Muji bottles
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 13 cmI think of zhoozhing the apartment for guests
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 14 cmI think of getting high and vacuuming the lounge room
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 11 cmI think of arranging objects on coffee tables
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 11 cm
I think of how clothes feel and fit my body
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 16 cmI think of throwing out my sweat stained bedding
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 11 cm
I think of being hot and fucking
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 17 cmI think of how a set of cutlery feels in my hands
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 12 cmI think of maintaining open body language in conversations
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 12 cmI think of making a pile of snotty tissues next to the couch
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 13 cmI think about people having fun in my company
2025
Mixed media on recycled card
21 x 29 x 12 cm