The artist Martyn Thompson’s practice has expanded and folded back on itself so many times since he began as a fashion photographer in the 1980s that it’s now difficult to describe him succinctly. Originally known for his collaborations with Ralph Lauren, Hermès and Vogue, Thompson, 64, has since made paintings, wallpaper, totemlike ceramics, glass sculptures and textiles. He largely stopped shooting for clients in 2012, and his shift away from the commercial world accelerated when he returned from New York to his hometown, Sydney, Australia, in 2020 to be closer to family. “Since I left New York,” he says, “I’ve been focused on creating one-off pieces; I wanted to really immerse myself in my art.”
Thompson’s sunlit apartment in the harborside suburb of Elizabeth Bay is both a refuge for him and a showcase for his creations. Situated in a nine-story Art Deco building, the 1,250-square-foot two-bedroom home appealed to him because of its high ceilings and capacious sitting room. “I was used to loft living in New York, so that’s what attracted me,” he says. From the beginning, he has treated the space like a living art installation, hand-painting the walls in the plant-filled dining room and connected sitting room in what’s become a leitmotif: a large-scale checkerboard, here in beige and a creamy white. In another corner of the room, anchored by a turmeric-toned Turkish rug, a wall is covered in checked wallpaper he designed in shades of warm brown, russet and yellow; it was printed from a photograph he took of one of his paintings.
His fabrics, glass and ceramics are also on display throughout the flat. A Ludwig Mies van der Rohe daybed is covered in a woven jacquard based on a mélange of Thompson’s photographs and paintings. Atop the nearby end table shaped like a mirrored box sits a spotted yellow-and-orange ceramic vase he designed. Along with checkerboards and polka dots, he also likes to play with the amphora shape of his signature Penny vase, which he iterates in paintings. Across the room, illuminated by the afternoon sun streaming through the bay window, stands one of his 12-foot-tall sculptures, a stack of painted, volleyball-size clay orbs with yellow, cream and brown dots.
The other sitting room furnishings mesh seamlessly with his singular aesthetic, including a high-backed African mahogany chair; a spidery black metal seat by the Australian artist Michael Gittings; and a ceramic table lamp from a lighting collection Thompson created with his former romantic partner, the Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Dove Hornbuckle.
Thompson’s favorite piece of art in the room is an oil portrait in muddy grays and earthy browns of a young woman, purchased 30 years ago at Paula Rubenstein’s antiques shop in SoHo. And while the painting’s somber shades dominate the apartment, there are jolts of color. His bedroom is awash in a variety of yellows: sunflower-hued bed linens and a saffron-and-black dotted jacquard throw that mirrors the hand-painted wooden folding screen beside the bed. Instead of closets, there are three large vintage Chinese cabinets, including an armoire in brilliant turquoise and a canary yellow bureau. An antique emerald green Murano glass pendant dangles from the ceiling, and on the walls are mounted a few of his earthenware dinner plates.
The walls in the office are an almost-black navy from Resene — a New Zealand-based paint brand Thompson favors for what he calls its “less commercial palette” — and the ceiling is covered in his red, blue, yellow and white checkerboard wallpaper. A mid-20th-century red-and-black-framed mirror from the Vault Sydney, the city’s antiques mecca, sits on built-in shelving, reflecting light from a Brutalist metal chandelier. The shelves hold ceramic and glass vessels, as well as a small maroon ceramic bowl by Hornbuckle and a pair of painted boxes in scarlet and grass green that Thompson has had for more than three decades.
“Since I moved in, there’s been a steady flow of things coming and going and changing,” he says, noting that most of the rooms have been painted and repainted many times. But it’s been almost a year since he’s changed anything up and, having cycled so blithely through milieus, materials and identities over the decades, he takes that as a sign of having at last arrived: “I’m going to hesitate and say it’s settled into what it’s meant to be.”
Photo assistant: Jordan Warne
Alexa Brazilian is a contributing editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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