From the run-down old terrace they bought in Brunswick 15 years ago, artists David Rosetzky and Sean Meilak have made a modernist-inspired home filled with light and exquisite attention to detail. The compositional instincts that are evident in both David and Sean’s work are also found in the home they’ve created, and reflects their shared love of design and simplicity.

David and Sean first met at Fitzroy’s Arcadia café in the early 1990s, at the beginning of both their careers. David founded 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space in 1994, one of a number of influential artist-run spaces that took advantage of that decade’s cheap inner-city rent and supportive councils. Beginning as a six-month program of three-day exhibitions in the studio/living space David was sharing with his brother, by 1996, 1st Floor had moved to a permanent location in Victoria Street, Fitzroy. From here, David and his collaborators and artists carved out an avant-garde approach to situating contemporary art within popular culture and a collaborative approach towards art and text (short texts by artists, philosophers or cultural theorists always accompanied the artworks on show). About 15 artists and writers were involved in the space, which ran until 2002, including Sean, who became co-director and program coordinator, in 1998.

This experimental approach toward art and text has long been present in David’s own video and photographic work, which is often created through an interview process that transforms the words of his subjects into the content of the work itself. Since those early days, David has gained an international reputation for intimate studies of individuals, groups and communities that delve into the tensions within subjectivity, behaviour and identity that define our relationships and the cultures we create. In the last few years, David’s work has been commissioned or exhibited locally and internationally by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Carriageworks, ACCA and the National Portrait Gallery, NGV, MCA, the International Centre for Photography (New York) and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Currently, he is working on a new photographic series for an exhibition at Sutton Gallery in April 2018.

Sean works across painting, drawing, video, sculpture and installation to draw attention to the interpersonal networks we create and physical spaces we inhabit. His delicate works address the architecture, design and psychology of both relational and built forms — real and imagined — in pieces that range from abstract formalism to intimate, illustrated portraits that reveal shared desires and vulnerabilities. Sean’s work has been exhibited at galleries including the NGV, Linden St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts, ACCA, Home Gallery (Prague), The Physics Room (Christchurch) and Openspace and Care-of Spazio d’art Contemporanea (Milan). He is working towards several shows in 2018, including exhibitions at Home@735 Gallery, Sydney, and Space on Collins, Melbourne, both opening in March.

At home in Brunswick, David and Sean’s living environment is serenely calm; a space for deep reflection, and creativity. David often works at home, in his studio in the front room, while Sean loves the daily five kilometre walk to his studio in Fitzroy. Welcoming us into their space on a perfect Spring morning, David and Sean lead us through to the backgarden, where you would usually find Lotti, their 20-year-old Siamese Oriental cat bathing in the sunlight — but she was too shy to appear for us.

David: We both had a love of gardening from our families, and growing up with big gardens — my father had an amazing rambling native garden. When we first set the garden up here it was more designed but, as it’s evolved, different plants have come and gone and we’re always bringing new plants in so it’s a very eclectic mix. It really is a very small space so we use every surface we can. When we first moved here, there was a concrete backyard with a Hills hoist and no plants at all. There are quite a few gardeners in the street, so we often go into each other’s gardens and swap plants, which is really nice. But this is really Lotti’s garden; it’s her domain. She’s happy here, and is quite elderly now so she just follows the sun and sleeps in different spots around the garden.

What I really like about the house is the relationship of the inside and outside, and how you can see reflections of the garden in the windows of the back door. Although it’s a really small house, it feels quite light and airy and, even though we don’t have huge windows, you’re very aware of the garden when you’re inside as well.

Our favourite spot tends to be sitting at the bench in the corner of the kitchen. Often I might bring a laptop over there and sit and work. Only one person can sit there at a time, though, because it’s such a small space. We had to be aware to make the kitchen look as spacious as possible — I think black wouldn’t have been a lot of people’s first choice but I think it works well because it’s quite a bold design feature and it creates a sense of depth within the small space.

We both have an interest in things and the relationships between objects — it’s not dissimilar to how you might compose an image. The objects we live with are a combination of functional items and decorative objects. There are also things that have been used in artworks that come into the house, like that stool I got for a video work I made for ACCA, or that wall unit Sean designed for the office at 1st Floor, which we now use a buffet.

And there are also objects of sentimental value. This bookshelf is from my father, who was born in Romania, grew up in Germany, and studied art and design in Wuppertal. He was a graphic designer and artist, and also somewhat of a collector and had some great examples of modern and postmodern European furniture. The bookshelf is a Cassina, designed by Vico Magistretti in 1977. Those shells were from my father too — he had quite a shell collection — and that Magritte print; I have a lot of mementos from him. And that little statue and the rugs are from my maternal grandparents. As a kid, we had a lot of art and design books at home, which I spent many, many hours looking through while I was growing up. The ethos of the Bauhaus was very influential on my father, so early 20th-century European art and design is something that I feel a connection to because of him and his background, but also because of the connection on my mother's side, whose family were from Berlin.

They’re all things we’ve accumulated over the years, we’re not really art collectors as such, but we have often swapped artwork with our artist friends – so we have a small, personal art collection of works by our peers, which we love. I think because we’re both artists and make compositions in our work, we are always considering the objects around us – the space they inhabit, and the potential narratives they create, that’s just how we function.  It’s kind of an intrinsic way of living.

Sean: We’ve always both liked the pattern designs of Austrian designer and architect Josef Frank, and these cushions were designed in the 1940s when he worked for Swedish designer Svenskt Tenn. This chaise lounge I found in a junk shop in North Melbourne. It’s a Thonet piece from the 1890s, and it all comes apart. I love that it’s really modern, and it has this bamboo headrest that you can adjust. Thonet was at the cusp of modern furniture through their mass production, and their design, aesthetic and technique had an extraordinary influence on many modernist designers and architects. You can see their influence in Bahaus architect Marcel Breuer’s furniture designs and Alvar Aalto’s and Charles and Ray Eames bentwood pieces. We look at a lot of movements from that period, including painters and architects and so on. Design has always been an influence in both our work. What I like about that period is there was such a sense of experimentation, and radical change – with artists exploring abstraction, new materials and forms. There were a lot of artists working across different fields – doing set design for theatre and film, and architects designing furniture, and this multi-disciplinary approach to artmaking is very inspiring to us.

My father is Maltese/Italian, but was born in Libya and moved to Australia when he was six. He worked in construction and project management but had started off as a carpenter and when he retired he wanted to work on some projects so we asked him to do the kitchen. I’ve now enlisted my father to construct the larger, architectural elements of my work. After we did the kitchen, we used to have these birds that would just walk in from outside, through the open door, and then we pulled out this Louise Weaver print that we got from the Australian Print Workshop about fifteen years ago and this was clearly the best spot for it.

In the garden we’re always making compositions and thinking about ways of arranging and viewing, and creating different combinations of textures and forms. We’re always collecting plants and moving things around, so it’s an ever-changing or evolving composition. We’re addicted to collecting plants, we’ll put one wherever we can.

When I was 11, we moved to a new house and my brother and I landscaped all the gardens, so I think I really got into it then. In the warmer months we’re always out here, we eat most of our meals in the garden. In the morning, I have tea or coffee out in the garden and look over things, picking up dead leaves or watering, just moving through the garden; it’s a sort of meditation.