The ability to bring memories to the surface is a defining characteristic of what it is to be human. A fragment of a song; the scent of lemons fermenting under a tree; the recollection of a Barbie-pink-tiled bathroom. It’s these fragments that make up the narrative of us. In the hands of a designer or artist, the fleeting recollections that make up the gossamer threads of memory become so much more than the synaptic interface between neurons. They become the source of inspiration for beautiful, beguiling objects, or even the foundation for entire design concepts.
When Melbourne-based interior designer Danielle Brustman was invited by the Jewish Museum to create a suite of objects to exhibit in response to A Secret Chord: Music, Rhythm and Movement in the Jewish Museum of Australia Collection, for the Eva and Marc Besen artist commission, she turned to memory. Specifically, her thoughts turned to her grandmothers, Marta and Dora, who both played a formative role in shaping her into the woman and designer she is today.
The resulting show, playfully titled I Could Have Danced All Night, which was her grandmother Marta’s favourite song, is at once deeply personal and poignantly universal.
Walking into the Jewish Museum, the notes of the show tunes and jazz that Brustman’s paternal grandmother, Marta, loved singing and dancing to in her kitchen draw you into the ground floor exhibition space.
From this first sensory encounter, the scene is set for an immersive experience with memory, family and the beauty of the ties that bind. “When I listen to these songs, I’m transported to the house and her memory is brought forward to the present,” Brustman says. “Music is an incredibly powerful tool to sort of take you anywhere, take you anywhere that your memory exists.”
While the songs that make up the soundtrack may not be familiar to all visitors, they’re of an era that most over the age of 30 will recognise in some way as the sound of our grandparents’ or perhaps even our parents’ generation. From the audio to the visual, every layer has been carefully considered to tell not Brustman’s story per se, but the story of two women who played such a significant role in her life.
The next layer is of course the visual. Brustman has harnessed the two design qualities she’s known for to transform the gallery from a white cube into a three-dimensional memory in technicolour.
While it would be easy to say that the colour palette – a striking combination of spearmint green and warm, comforting Arrowroot biscuit beige with accents of vintage coral, lemon sorbet yellow, dusty lilac and aviation blue – is quintessentially Brustman, the truth is that what has become her signature style originates with her grandmother’s bathroom.
“The house that my grandmother had has definitely inspired my work,” Brustman says when asked about the origin of her love of colour. “There’s a photograph of me as a child in her bathroom – it’s a truly fantastic bathroom with the red and blue tiles. I’ve laughed about this to myself and said it way before thinking about this exhibition – I think, basically, my work has always been about me recreating that bathroom.”
This begs the question that many designers wrestle with: where do my ideas come from? Are they truly mine? Certainly, we are all the sum of our experiences, shaped by the people, places and spaces, which loom large in our conscious and subconscious thoughts. We are our memories.
No exhibition, no matter how immersive and engaging on a sensory level, is complete without the presentation of an object. Even a pure sound work incorporates an element of the past that a viewer can orient themselves to. In I Could Have Danced All Night, Brustman offers two opportunities to engage and be transported via the tangible.
First, we encounter two beguiling objects — a music box and a jewellery box — which have been placed proudly in the centre of the space atop custom-made plinths that echo each piece’s form. Designed by Brustman and made by local furniture maker Brent Hall, both pieces are objectively beautiful and unlike any music box or jewellery box you may have seen before. And, unlike many artworks, these pieces are functional, useful objects.
The concept for the music box came from, of all things, a shopping bag. “I knew her [grandmother Marta’s] house and her things so intimately. I loved all of her things and I loved opening up her drawers and finding all her canisters and dressing up in her silk scarves and all the things she had. So I had a very intimate knowledge of her objects,” Brustman muses.
As is process, Brustman began playing around with a few different forms, pushing, pulling and extrapolating. Nothing seemed to be working. Until a flash of memory led her to a cherished shopping bag of Marta’s that Brustman had had in her cupboard since her grandmother died. “It’s a really cool 60s bag and has such a great, unusual shape, and it was even more potent for me as she used it every day,” Brustman says. “My grandmother took this bag everywhere, it was her shopping bag for 40 or so years. When she died, I inherited it and I used it so much that it started to fall apart. I felt terrible that I’d almost ruined it. So I decided to stop using it.”
Inspiration and ideas really can come from anywhere, including a seemingly banal everyday shopping bag. Incorporated into the music box, which unfurls in graduated layers like the wings of a butterfly, are the titles of Marta’s favourite songs engraved into the surface of luminous tortoiseshell. Again, while we may not recognise the form as a shopping bag, and the song titles may not conjure up melodies in our minds, the conceptual magic of music boxes and the nostalgic interplay of materials and old-time music goes to work on our psyches.
The second piece is a circular jewellery box featuring 18 small burl walnut drawers, perfectly arranged beneath a central top compartment. This piece also began with Brustman’s memories of rummaging through her grandmother’s dressing table and sewing table draws. Like all curious little children, she was fascinated by the buttons, thread and random assortment of paraphernalia that finds its way into certain drawers.
Continuing the theme of nostalgic re-use and re-interpretation, the jewellery box is made from an Art Deco dressing table that Brustman inherited from her grandmother. “I’ve had it in storage since I was a teenager, I couldn’t bear to part with it,” Brustman reflects. The dressing table has been deftly cut and reconfigured by Hall. Each of the 18 drawers, punctuated with colourful rods that form handles, is representative of one of her grandmother Dora’s immediate family members. “My grandmother had 12 siblings. And so each drawer is in honour of her siblings, her parents and her children,” shares Brustman, explaining the narrative concept underpinning the design. Displayed proudly on the inside surface of the folding lid is the Hebrew letter Darlet, which is the equivalent of the letter D for Dora.
The final element of the show takes the viewer even deeper down memory lane. Behind a partition wall, a looped video montage of family photos set in time to the soundtrack plays on repeat.
Depending on your voyeuristic proclivities, there is an initial moment of discomfort about looking at someone else’s family photos; special moments that mean so much to the artist. Her parents’ wedding day. Happy family snaps at various celebrations. Her own university graduation. And of course, the artist aged around seven or eight in that bathroom, smiling cheekily into the camera.
Yet, within moments, these strangers become proxies for one’s own family. Memories of your own childhood, all the awkward, joyful, seemingly inconsequential yet now poignant moments of life rise to the surface.
While I Could Have Danced All Night is an expression of Brustman’s grandmothers, or more specifically her memories of them, it is also an expression of our shared cultural and intergenerational connections. Regardless of our heritage, we all carry within us the memories of our immediate and distant ancestors. We’re all in possession of valueless yet invaluable and treasured mementos that take us back to them and back to ourselves.
There is something incredibly powerful about this show. Perhaps it’s the energetic resonance of the heirloom materials the pieces are made from. Perhaps it’s the universal understanding of the power of bloodlines – even if they’re infused with elements of absence or loss. Perhaps it’s the confident expression of heritage, family and female agency. Perhaps it’s all three. And at a moment in time when there is so much unrest in the world, there has never been a better moment to remember how precious your family is.
I Could Have Danced All Night is on show at the Jewish Museum until 9 March 2025.