Los Angeles has long been a place that artists have come to in order to push their practices and engage in a new context. With so many layers to the art scenes, it feels like a place of limitless opportunity. As an Australian curator, Charlotte Cornish was drawn to L.A. for that reason. She’d worked in galleries from the Guggenheim in New York to Utopian Slumps back home in Melbourne, got her Masters in curating and opened her own gallery, The Honeymoon Suite, before moving to L.A. She now lives in Silver Lake in a mid-century home that feels like a tree house, with her husband and two young kids. It's a space that has never made her feel more grounded. Cornish speaks to fellow Melburnian, artist Nabilah Nordin, who has recently relocated to L.A. too. They swap stories about art and moving cities.
NN: How did The Honeymoon Suite come about? Was it through wanting to connect with artists in Melbourne specifically, and was it meant to be very locally focused?
CC: It was definitely locally focused. It came about because I had a lot of curatorial ideas that I just wanted to come into fruition. I kind of viewed it more as of a curatorial project ‘at large’ rather than a gallery. And I used the structure of the gallery to communicate my curatorial ideas through the exhibitions. But when you're trying to have a voice, you just need to be a gallery. After that project completed I was burnt out, and I'd kind of reached my limit. That was the driver for wanting to move overseas. I had always wanted to move back to America, because I had lived in New York and done an internship at the Guggenheim in my early 20s, around 2011–2012. At the time I was the only person doing an internship that didn't have a Masters, and I realised I needed one to work in the arts in this way.
NN: Everyone in the arts is so overly qualified. [Laughs.]
CC: I completed my Masters, I had The Honeymoon Suite, and then I was ready. So in 2019 my husband Hugh and I moved. My ambition was big when I first got here. I wanted to work at a mega gallery. I had my eyes set on Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner wasn't here at the time, but Gagosian was – that kind of level, because they don't exist in Australia. I wanted to get experience at an institution-level commercial space and see how they were run. And then COVID hit, and I felt very disheartened by that. Everyone has their own COVID story. At that time, we had only been living here for several months. We were in a furnished rental, we had none of our own things. We didn't have our base set up yet, and we were getting there, but it takes time in L.A.
NN: It is a hard city to navigate. Especially at the start. I had to learn how to drive to just get around. It’s a sprawling city and there are so many different layers to the city as well. It feels like there are moments of dreams and glitz and sparkle, but then there are also moments of real life; a freeway-churning sort of darkness. That's very polarising.
CC: Yes, you put that so well. It can be intensely beautiful and inspiring and full of possibility and wonder. It gives you ambition, curiosity, passion… and then there’s just the grind of living in a city with this many people, with this many systemic problems and things that you're kind of faced with day to day. It’s extreme. I think that's why finding your place, where you want to settle, is really crucial to your experience.
NN: When you walked into the house that you currently live in (I know it well because I lived there when I first arrived), what drew you to that particular home in Silver Lake?
CC: As a city, L.A. really values architecture. There are so many amazing architectural homes dotted throughout the city. Silver Lake really has a high concentration of mid-century homes that are particularly iconic. There is an amazing John Lautner house that you can actually see from our balcony, just the top of it. And the Neutra VDL Studio and Residences on the other side of the reservoir in what they call the ‘Neutra Colony’, where there's various homes designed by Richard Neutra. So to find a mid-century home in this pocket of Los Angeles just felt incredibly special and meaningful to home life in L.A. I've always been drawn to the functionality and elegant simplicity of this style, and it’s conversation between the natural world and the domestic. A lot of the architects considered the natural world as part of their design. I think given that, and its location on the reservoir, which, you know, by Melbourne standards, the reservoir is not the most beautiful place, but in L.A. we’re lucky to look out onto the mountains and the water. And in a city that is not walkable, this area is very walkable and I really connected with that kind of lifestyle. It's amongst everything, but also very quiet and residential, which I really liked.
NN: And the house itself, I remember when I first walked in and was looking around, it feels like it's held – at the back and the front – by all this greenery. There’s a big tree at the front, and then at the back there's a hill or a slope that's covered with greenery. It feels kind of like a tree house.
CC: That was my first impression too: a really elegant, beautiful tree house. It’s one of those situations where I'm so glad I trusted my intuition because it's easily the best home I've ever lived in. I've never felt more like myself. I've never felt more grounded, or more relaxed, in a space. And its functionality with two young children in a city that requires a lot of driving – it's just so fitting for where we are in our life right now.
NN: What has it been like raising kids in that home? It feels like you can play in this space; the way that the house is laid out and the flow of it. To me it feels very open, yet there are multi-spaces. You’ve got the upstairs and the downstairs, and it feels like you can all be there together, but also be comfortable and separate.
CC: The layout is one of the things that initially drew me to it – having all of the bedrooms up one end and the centralised kitchen at the heart of the home. Then having a play area, and then I suppose more of the adult ‘chill zone’ with the view and the balcony. But the kids are all over the house. I would love to have a patch of grass, but maintenance-wise in L.A., that's... I think it’s possibly illegal to have grass now. Or they want everyone to get rid of it because of drought and water restrictions. So having that deck space is great because it is so contained for the children to play.
NN: It’s inside, but it's outside.
CC: Yes, and we have some beautiful trees to look out on to. There's still a lot of greenery, but the maintenance is very low, and it's super safe for kids. The more I live in it, the more I experience how well it functions, and I really put that down to mid-century architects thinking about the practical ways to live your life. How much space do you actually need? And how are people going to occupy the space. I keep coming back to that simplicity and the idea of building a home for your lifestyle.
NN: The design is doing the actual work, and you're experiencing it working for you.
CC: That’s been really wonderful. We did have to renovate the kitchen, only because when we moved in it was really old cabinetry and they were falling apart.
NN: Compared to the other parts of the house, I do think the kitchen feels a bit different. I always love the feeling of the material world, of metal with nature.
CC: Yeah, it does contrast with that really beautifully. The original kitchen was sort of a hodgepodge of two different styles, but one of them was stainless steel, which I loved. We just wanted to make it more cohesive and built some functional elements that were missing, like a pantry. But I really liked the stainless steel part of the kitchen. I think if you're going back to, kind of, the honesty of materials that I'm drawn to with mid-century style, I think that really spoke to me as a good material to use in the kitchen, and to continue that conversation and try to go do something more with it.
NN: It feels functional, and practical and easy. So, did you bring your own furniture and things from Melbourne?
CC: Not initially, until we found this home that we’re currently living in. It was only then that I wanted some of our art and objects to be with us. There was this kind of longing for familiarity, I suppose. And I wasn't just going to go and buy all this new stuff and furnish the house. I knew that I had some things that meant a lot to me. One of those artworks was our big work by Jahnne Pasco-White that’s in our living room. It fits perfectly on that wall like it was made for it. That work is titled Symbiosis, and it was a commission Jahnne made for Hugh and I for our wedding. Having that work here creates so much space for thought, and every time I look at it, I find something new. It’s not only that experience of always looking and kind of feeling and finding, it's what it reminds me of too. We got married in front of that painting, and we had all of our family and friends there, and I think even the title Symbiosis, the concept of building, the life I have here with my husband and our raising kids here… I just think its all our raising kids here… I just think it all just carries so much meaning for me.
NN: It's such a personal work.
CC: Super personal. And Jahnne is a friend as well, so I feel there's something really beautiful about being surrounded by works where you actually know the artist and you have a personal relationship with them. I did a show with Jahnne called Loose Ends at The Honeymoon Suite, and that's how I got to know her. Not all of these relationships eventuate in a friendship, but some of them do, and that one is really meaningful to me.
NN: There’s a sense of openness in the way that she works with painterly abstraction, and also speaking to that connection, with the rawness of the materials that she uses. There is a sense of grounding in her work.
CC: That’s really true. There's an openness to it, you know, not even just in its structure, but in its energy. It's the rawness of the fringing of the fabric and the canvas of the site. The true essence of the painting and the materials that were applied onto the painting – they’re very visible and not tailored or controlled. It's elemental, which I think speaks to the home
as well. After I had my daughter, I was really drawn to the female form. I know that's such a common, and also contentious, art reference in terms of the historical female gaze, but it was interesting, because Grace Wood, who's another Melbourne artist, she had a show at LON Gallery shortly after Isidora was born. I bought one of those works called Springtime, the green silk with the tree. I just think Grace is a master of colour, because collage is something that's so common these days. It is really hard to find very effective collage. It’s one of those things that a lot of people can do, but very few people can do well, and I think she is a master of it. She intertwines art history and the natural world really beautifully. But I also think that she does it with a sense of humour.
NN: It's like an open narrative. You don't really know why.
CC: I was really drawn to that work because it’s this statuesque, frozen female figure, on a Monet-esque background, but then there's this urinal at the bottom, which is obviously a reference to Duchamp. I think it flips a lot of art history on its head, but in a really subtle way. That's what I was taking from it at the time because of my perspective about women and their bodies being subjected to different things.
NN: I think the placement of the work in that kitchen/communal space is really perfect too.
CC: That’s another thing I love about the mid-century, or maybe this is just how I feel about my own home, but it's not so precious. It’s a space to live in without feeling like you have to take care of things in a certain way. I think the materials that we have in our home are very robust and just functional for what their purpose is, and also having children, I don't want them to feel like they can’t play and make a mess. I want them to be able to learn with ease rather than being like, “Don’t go there, don’t touch that…”. Though I will say, when Isadora is jumping on our [vintage mid-70s] Camaleonda sofa, I'm a bit like, “Please make sure your shoes are off”.
NN: I think that is such a beautiful point – to have a home where the materials feel so raw and genuine and easy that you can just melt into the space and have it flow in a way that doesn't feel like it's a performance. It's a place to let go. Just let the spillages of life happen within it.
CC: Yes, exactly. It’s definitely necessary in this city, to feel that kind of groundedness. I'm also spending so much of my life at home now, I think it's just the way with young children, so I’m glad that it feels comforting. I really don't know if we'd still be here if I hadn't found a place where we felt so grounded. Because you know, in so many ways, this city is really hard, and it’s so easy to fantasise about moving back to Australia and how easy that could be.
